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CHANGE  IN  THE   VILLAGE 


CHANGE  IN  THE 
VILLAGE 


BY 


GEORGE     BOURNE,  jos^ui 


NEW    YORK 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN   COMPANY 

1912 


Printed  in  Great  Britain  by  Billing  ^  Sons,  Ltd.,  Guildford,  England 


TO 

MY  SISTERS 


^ 

\ 
^ 


CONTENTS 


V  I.    THE   VILLAGE      - 

ci 

O 

^  II 


V.    DRINK   - 


VII.    GOOD   TEMPER 


a.''. 


>ir^<^f"^-  ^ 


PAGE 

3 


^  THE  PRESENT  TIME 

II.  SELF-RELIANCE  -  -  -  -         21 

^  III.  MAN    AND    WIFE  -  -  -  "         38 

'^  IV.  MANIFOLD   TROUBLES     -  -  -  -5° 


65 

VI.    WAYS   AND   MEANS  -  -  -  "79 


97 


III 

THE  ALTERED  CIRCUMSTANCES 

VIII.    THE    PEASANT   SYSTEM   -  -  -  "  "5 

IX.    THE    NEW   THRIFT  -  -  -  -  1 27 

X.    COMPETITION       -----  14^ 

XI.    HUMILIATION      -  -  -  .  '  IS^ 

XII.    THE   HUMILIATED  -  -  -  -  1 67 

XIII.    NOTICE   TO   QUIT  ....  jgo 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

IV 

THE  RESULTING  NEEDS 

PAGE 

XIV.    THE   INITIAL   DEFECT      -                 -  -  -  193 

XV.    THE   OPPORTUNITY  ...  -  200 

XVI.    THE   OBSTACLES                  -                 -  -  -  21 7 

XVII.    THE   women's    NEED       -                 -  -  -  229 

XVIII.    THE   WANT   OF    BOOK-LEARNING  -  -  244 

XIX.    EMOTIONAL   STARVATION                -  -  -  260 

XX.  THE   children's    NEED                  -  -  -  272 

V 

XXI.  THE   FORWARD    MOVEMENT           -  -  -  289 


/    I 


I 

THE  VILLAGE 


THE  VILLAGE 

If  one  were  to  be  very  strict,  I  suppose  it  would 
be  wrong  to  give  the  name  of  "  village  "  to  the  parish 
dealt  with  in  these  chapters,  because  your  true 
village  should  have  a  sort  of  corporate  history  of 
its  own,  and  this  one  can  boast  nothing  of  the  kind. 
It  clusters  round  no  central  green  ;  no  squire  ever 
lived  in  it ;  until  some  thirty  years  ago  it  was  without 
a  resident  parson  ;  its  church  is  not  half  a  century 
old.  Nor  are  there  here,  in  the  shape  of  patriarchal 
fields,  or  shady  lanes,  or  venerable  homesteads,  any 
of  those  features  that  testify  to  the  immemorial 
antiquity  of  real  villages  as  the  homes  of  men  ;  and 
this  for  a  very  simple  reason.  In  the  days  when 
real  villages  were  growing,  our  valley  could  not 
have  supported  a  quite  self-contained  community  : 
it  was,  in  fact,  nothing  but  a  part  of  the  wide  rolling 
heath-country — the  "  common,"  or  "  waste,"  be- 
longing to  the  town  which  lies  northwards,  in  a 
more  fertile  valley  of  its  own.  Here,  there  was  no 
fertility.     Deep  down  in  the  hollow  a  stream,  which 

3 


4  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

runs  dry  every  summer,  had  prepared  a  strip  of 
soil  just  worth  reclaiming  as  coarse  meadow  or 
tillage  ;  but  the  strip  was  narrow — a  man  might 
throw  a  stone  across  it  at  some  points — and  on 
either  side  the  heath  and  gorse  and  fern  held  their 
own  on  the  dry  sand.  Such  a  place  afforded  no 
room  for  an  English  village  of  the  true  manorial 
kind ;  and  I  surmise  that  it  lay  all  but  uninhabited 
until  perhaps  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
by  which  time  a  few  "  squatters  "  from  neighbouring 
parishes  had  probably  settled  here,  to  make  what 
living  they  might  beside  the  stream-bed.  At  no 
time,  therefore,  did  the  people  form  a  group  of 
genuinely  agricultural  rustics.  Up  to  a  period 
within  living  memory,  they  were  an  almost  inde- 
pendent folk,  leading  a  sort  of  "  crofter,"  or  (as  I 
have  perf erred  to  call  it)  a  "  peasant  "  life  ;  while 
to-day  the  majority  of  the  men,  no  longer  indepen- 
dent, go  out  to  work  as  railway  navvies,  builders' 
labourers,  drivers  of  vans  and  carts  in  the  town  ; 
or  are  more  casually  employed  at  digging  gravel,  or 
road-mending,  or  harvesting  and  hay-making,  or 
attending  people's  gardens,  or  laying  sewers,  or  in 
fact  at  any  job  they  can  find.  At  a  low  estimate 
nine  out  of  every  ten  of  them  get  their  living  outside 
the  parish  boundaries  ;  and  this  fact  by  itself  would 
rob  the  place  of  its  title  to  be  thought  a  village,  in 
the  strict  sense. 

In  appearance,  too,  it  is  abnormal.     As  you  look 
down  upon  the  valley  from  its  high  sides,  hardly 


THE  VILLAGE  5 

anywhere  are  there  to  be  seen  three  cottages  in  a 
row,  but  all  about  the  steep  slopes  the  little  mean 
dwelling-places  are  scattered  in  disorder.  So  it 
extends  east  and  west  for  perhaps  a  mile  and  a  half 
— a  surprisingly  populous  hollow  now,  wanting  in 
restf  ulness  to  the  eyes  and  much  disfigured  by  shabby 
detail,  as  it  winds  away  into  homelier  and  softer 
country  at  either  end.  The  high-road  out  of  the 
town,  stretching  away  for  Hindhead  and  the  South 
Coast,  comes  slanting  down  athwart  the  valley, 
cutting  it  into  "  Upper  "  and  "  Lower  "  halves  or 
ends  ;  and  just  in  the  bottom,  where  there  is  a  bridge 
over  the  stream,  the  appearances  might  deceive  a 
stranger  into  thinking  that  he  had  come  to  the 
nucleus  of  an  old  village,  since  a  dilapidated  farm- 
stead and  a  number  of  cottages  line  the  sides  of  the 
road  at  that  point.  The  appearances,  however,  are 
deceptive.  I  doubt  if  the  cottages  are  more  than  a 
century  old  ;  and  even  if  any  of  them  have  a  greater 
antiquity,  still  it  is  not  as  the  last  relics  of  an  earlier 
village  that  they  are  to  be  regarded.  On  the  con- 
trary, they  indicate  the  beginnings  of  the  present 
village.  Before  them,  their  place  was  unoccupied, 
and  they  do  but  commemorate  the  first  of  that  series 
of  changes  by  which  the  valley  has  been  turned 
from  a  desolate  wrinkle  in  the  heaths  into  the  anoma- 
lous suburb  it  has  become  to-day. 

Of  the  period  and  manner  of  that  first  change  I 
have  already  given  a  hint,  attributing  it  indefinitely 
to  a  slow  immigration  of  squatters  somewhere  in 


6  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

the  eighteenth  century.  Neither  the  manner  of  it, 
however,  nor  the  period  is  material  here.  Let  it 
suffice  that,  a  hundred  years  ago  or  so,  the  valley 
had  become  inhabited  by  people  living  in  the 
'*  peasant  "  way  presently  to  be  described  more 
fully.  The  subject  of  this  book  begins  with  the 
next  change,  which  by  and  by  overtook  these  same 
people,  and  dates  from  the  enclosure  of  the  common, 
no  longer  ago  than  1861.  The  enclosure  was 
effected  in  the  usual  fashion  :  a  few  adjacent  land- 
owners obtained  the  lion's  share,  while  the  cottagers 
came  in  for  small  allotments.  These  allotments,  of 
little  use  to  their  owners,  and  in  many  cases  soon 
sold  for  a  few  pounds  apiece,  became  the  sites  of 
the  first  few  cottages  for  a  newer  population,  who 
slowly  drifted  in  and  settled  down,  as  far  as  might 
be,  to  the  habits  and  outlook  of  their  predecessors. 
This  second  period  continued  until  about  1900. 
And  now,  during  the  last  ten  years,  a  yet  greater 
change  has  been  going  on.  The  valley  has  been 
"  discovered  "  as  a  "  residential  centre."  A  water- 
company  gave  the  signal  for  development.  No 
sooner  was  a  good  water-supply  available  than 
speculating  architects  and  builders  began  to  buy 
up  vacant  plots  of  land,  or  even  cottages — it  mat- 
tered little  which — and  what  never  was  strictly 
speaking  a  village  is  at  last  ceasing  even  to  think 
itself  one.  The  population  of  some  five  hundred 
twenty  years  ago  has  increased  to  over  two  thou- 
sand ;  the  final  shabby  patches  of  the  old  heath  are 


THE  VILLAGE  7 

disappearing  ;  on  all  hands  glimpses  of  new  building 
and  raw  new  roads  defy  you  to  persuade  yourself 
that  you  are  in  a  country  place.  In  fact,  the  place 
is  a  suburb  of  the  town  in  the  next  valley,  and  the 
once  quiet  high-road  is  noisy  with  the  motor-cars 
of  the  richer  residents  and  all  the  town  traffic  that 
waits  upon  the  less  wealthy. 

But  although  in  the  exactest  sense  the  parish 
was  never  a  village,  its  inhabitants,  as  lately  as 
twenty  years  ago  (when  I  came  to  live  here)  had 
after  all  a  great  many  of  the  old  English  country 
characteristics.  Dependent  on  the  town  for  their 
living  the  most  of  them  may  have  been  by  that 
time  ;  yet  they  had  derived  their  outlook  and  their 
habits  from  the  earlier  half-squatting,  half-yeoman 
people  ;  so  that  I  found  myself  amongst  neighbours 
rustic  enough  to  justify  me  in  speaking  of  them  as 
villagers.  I  have  come  across  their  like  elsewhere, 
and  I  am  not  deceived.  They  had  the  country  touch. 
They  were  a  survival  of  the  England  that  is  dying 
out  now ;  and  I  grieve  that  I  did  not  realize  it 
sooner.  As  it  was,  some  years  had  passed  by,  and 
the  movement  by  which  I  find  myself  living 
to-day  in  a  "  residential  centre "  was  already 
faintly  stirring  before  I  began  to  discern  properly 
that  the  earlier  circumstances  would  repay  closer 
attention. 

They  were  not  all  agreeable  circumstances  ;  some 
of  them,  indeed,  were  so  much  the  reverse  of  agree- 


8  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

able  that  I  hardly  see  now  how  I  could  ever  have 
found  them  even  tolerable.  The  want  of  proper 
sanitation,  for  instance  ;  the  ever-recurring  scarcity 
of  water  ;  the  plentiful  signs  of  squalid  and  disordered 
living — how  unpleasant  they  aU  must  have  been  ! 
On  the  other  hand,  some  of  the  circumstances  were 
so  acceptable  that,  to  recover  them,  I  could  at  times 
almost  be  willing  to  go  back  and  endure  the  others. 
It  were  worth  something  to  renew  the  old  lost  sense 
of  quiet  ;  worth  something  to  be  on  such  genial 
terms  with  one's  neighbours  ;  worth  very  much  to 
become  acquainted  again  at  first  hand  with  the 
customs  and  modes  of  thought  that  prevailed  in 
those  days.  Here  at  my  door  people  were  living,  in 
many  respects,  by  primitive  codes  which  have  now 
all  but  disappeared  from  England,  and  things  must 
have  been  frequently  happening  such  as,  hence- 
forth, will  necessitate  journeys  into  other  countries 
if  one  would  see  them. 

I  remember  yet  how  subtly  the  intimations  of  a 
primitive  mode  of  living  used  to  reach  me  before  I 
had  learnt  to  appreciate  their  meaning.  Unawares 
an  impression  of  antiquity  would  come  stealing 
over  the  senses,  on  a  November  evening,  say,  when 
the  blue  wood-smoke  mounted  from  a  cottage 
chimney  and  went  drifting  slowly  down  the  valley 
in  level  layers  ;  or  on  still  summer  afternoons,  when 
there  came  up  from  the  hollow  the  sounds  of  hay- 
making— the  scythe  shearing   through   the  grass. 


THE  VILLAGE  9 

the  clatter  of  the  whetstone,  the  occasional  country 
voices.  The  dialect,  and  the  odd  ideas  expressed 
in  it,  worked  their  elusive  magic  over  and  over 
again.  To  hear  a  man  commend  the  weather, 
rolling  out  his  "  Nice  moamin'  "  with  the  fat  Surrey 
"  R,"  or  to  be  wished  "  Good-day,  sir,"  in  the  high 
twanging  voice  of  some  cottage-woman  or  other,  was 
to  be  reminded  in  one's  senses,  without  thinking 
about  it  at  all,  that  one  was  amongst  people  not 
of  the  town,  and  hardly  of  one's  own  era.  The  queer 
things,  too,  which  one  happened  to  hear  of,  the 
simple  ideas  which  seemed  so  much  at  home  in  the 
valley,  though  they  would  have  been  so  much  to  be 
deprecated  in  the  town,  all  contributed  to  produce 
the  same  old-world  impression.  Where  the  moon's 
changes  were  discussed  so  solemnly,  and  people 
numbered  the  "  mistis  in  March  "  in  expectation  of 
corresponding  "  frostis  in  May  "  ;  where,  if  a  pig 
fell  sick,  public  opinion  counselled  killing  it  betimes, 
lest  it  should  die  and  be  considered  unfit  for  food  ; 
where  the  most  time-honoured  saying  was  counted 
the  best  wit,  so  that  you  raised  a  friendly  smile  by 
murmuring  "  Good  for  young  ducks "  when  it 
rained  ;  where  the  names  of  famous  sorts  of  potatoes 
— red-nosed  kidneys,  magnum  bonums,  and  so  on — 
were  better  known  than  the  names  of  politicians  or 
of  newspapers  ;  where  spades  and  reap-hooks  of 
well-proved  quality  were  treasured  as  friends  by 
their  owners  and  coveted  by  other  connoisseurs — 
it  was  impossible  that  one  should  not  be  frequently 


10  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

visited  by  the  feeling  of  something  very  old-fashioned 
in  the  human  life  surrounding  one. 

More  pointed  in  their  suggestion  of  a  rustic 
tradition  were  the  various  customs  and  pursuits 
proper  to  given  seasons.  The  customs,  it  is  true, 
were  preserved  only  by  the  children  ;  but  they  had 
their  acceptable  effect.  It  might  have  been  foolish 
and  out-of-date,  yet  it  was  undeniably  pleasant  to 
know  on  May  Day  that  the  youngsters  were  making 
holiday  from  school,  and  to  have  them  come  to 
the  door  with  their  morning  faces,  bringing  their 
buttercup  garlands  and  droning  out  the  appropriate 
folk  ditty.  At  Christmastime,  too,  it  was  pleasant 
when  they  came  singing  carols  after  dark.  This, 
indeed,  they  still  do  ;  but  either  I  am  harder  to 
please  or  the  performance  has  actually  degenerated, 
for  I  can  no  longer  discover  in  it  the  simple  childish 
spirit  that  made  it  gratifying  years  ago. 

Meanwhile,  quite  apart  from  such  celebrations, 
the  times  and  seasons  observed  by  the  people  in 
following  their  work  gave  a  flavour  of  folk  manners 
which  dignified  the  life  of  the  parish,  by  associating 
it  with  the  doings  of  the  countryside  for  many 
generations.  In  August,  though  one  did  not  see, 
one  heard  about,  the  gangs  of  men  trudging  off  at 
night  for  the  Sussex  harvest.  In  September  the 
days  went  very  silently  in  the  valley,  because  the 
cottages  were  shut  up  and  the  people  were  all  away 
at  the  hop-picking  ;  and  then,  in  the  gathering  dusk, 
one  heard  the  buzz  and  rumour  of  manifold  home- 


THE  VILLAGE  ii 

comings — tired  children  squalling,  women  talking 
and  perhaps  scolding,  as  the  little  chattering  groups 
came  near  and  passed  out  of  earshot  to  their  several 
cottages  ;  while,  down  the  hollows,  hovering  in  the 
crisp  night  air,  drifted  a  most  appetizing  smell  of 
herrings  being  fried  for  a  late  meal.  Earlier  in  the 
year  there  was  hay-making  in  the  valley  itself.  All 
the  warm  night  was  sometimes  fragrant  with  the 
scent  of  the  cut  grass  ;  and  about  this  season,  too, 
the  pungent  odour  of  shallots  lying  out  in  the 
gardens  to  ripen  off  would  come  in  soft  whiffs  across 
the  hedges.  Always,  at  all  times,  the  people  were 
glad  to  gossip  about  their  gardens,  bringing  vividly 
into  one's  thoughts  the  homely  importance  of  the 
month,  nay,  the  very  week,  that  was  passing.  Now, 
around  Good  Friday,  the  talk  would  be  of  potato- 
planting  ;  and  again,  in  proper  order,  one  heard  of 
peas  and  runner-beans,  and  so  through  the  summer 
fruits  and  plants,  to  the  ripening  of  plums  and 
apples,  and  the  lifting  of  potatoes  and  carrots  and 
parsnips. 

In  all  these  ways  the  parish,  if  not  a  true  village, 
seemed  quite  a  country  place  twenty  years  ago,  and 
its  people  were  country  people.  Yet  there  was 
another  side  to  the  picture.  The  charm  of  it  was  a 
generalized  one — I  think  an  impersonal  one  ;  for  with 
the  thought  of  individual  persons  who  might  illus- 
trate it  there  comes  too  often  into  my  memory  a 
touch  of  sordidness,  if  not  in  one  connection  then 


12  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

in  another  ;  so  that  I  suspect  myself,  not  for  the 
first  time,  of  sentimentality.  Was  the  social  atmos- 
phere after  all  anything  but  a  creation  of  my  own 
dreams  ?     Was  the  village  life  really  idyllic  ? 

Not  for  a  moment  can  I  pretend  that  it  was. 
Patience  and  industry  dignified  it ;  a  certain  rough 
jollity,  a  large  amount  of  good  temper  and  natural 
kindness,  kept  it  from  being  foul ;  but  of  the  namby- 
pamby  or  soft-headed  sentiment  which  many  writers 
have  persuaded  us  to  attribute  to  old-English 
cottage  life  I  think  I  have  not  in  twenty  years  met 
with  a  single  trace.  In  fact,  there  are  no  people 
so  likely  to  make  ridicule  of  that  sort  of  thing  as 
my  labouring-class  neighbours  have  always  been. 
They  do  not,  like  the  middle  classes,  enjoy  it.  It  is 
a  commodity  for  which  they  have  no  use,  as  may 
appear  in  the  following  pages. 

To  say  this,  however,  is  to  say  too  little.  I  do  not 
mean  that  the  prevailing  temper  in  the  village  was 
sordid,  bitter,  cruel,  like  that,  say,  of  the  Norman 
peasantry  in  De  Maupassant's  short  stories.  In  by 
far  the  greater  majority  the  people  have  usually 
seemed  to  me  at  the  worst  a  little  suspicious,  a  little 
callous,  a  little  undemonstrative,  and  at  the  best 
generous  and  happy-go-lucky  to  a  fault.  Never- 
theless, tales  as  repulsive  as  any  that  the  French 
writer  has  told  of  his  country-people  could  have 
been  collected  here  by  anyone  with  a  taste  for  that 
sort  of  thing.  Circumstantial  narratives  have 
reached  me  of  savage,  or,  say,  brutish,  doings  :  of  sons 


THE  VILLAGE  13 

ill-treating  their  mothers,  and  husbands  their  wives  ; 
of  fights,  and  cruelties,  and  sometimes — not  often — 
of  infamous  vice.     The  likelihood  of  these  tales, 
which  there  was  no  reason  to  doubt,  was  strengthened 
by  what  I  saw  and  heard  for  myself.     Drunkenness 
corrupted  and  disgraced  the  village  life,  so  that 
good  men  went  wrong  and  their  families  suffered 
miserably.     I  have  helped  more  than  one  drunkard 
home  at  night,  and  seen  a  wretched  woman  or  a 
frightened  child  come  to  the  door  to  receive  him. 
Even  in  the  seclusion  of  my  own  garden  I  could 
not  escape  the  evidences  of  mischief  going  on.     For 
sounds  echo  up  and  down  the  valley  as  clearly  as 
across  the  water  of  a  lake ;  and  sometimes  a  quiet 
evening  would  grow  suddenly  horrid  with  distracted 
noises  of  family  quarrel  in  some  distant  cottage, 
when  women  shrilled  and  clamoured  and  men  cursed, 
and  all  the  dogs  in  the  parish  fell  a-barking  furiously. 
Even  in  bed  one  could  not  be  secure.     Once  or 
twice  some  wild  cry  in  the  night — a  woman's  scream, 
a  man's  volley  of  oaths — has  drawn  me  hurrying  to 
my  window  in  dread  that  outrage  was  afoot ;  and 
often  the  sounds  of  obscene  singing  from  the  road, 
where  men  were  blundering  homewards  late  from  the 
public-houses  in  the  town,  have  startled  me  out  of 
my  first  sleep.     Then,  besides  the  distresses  brought 
upon  the  people  by  their  own  folly,   there  were 
others  thrust  upon  them  by  their  economic  condi- 
tion.    Of  poverty,  with  its  attendant  sicknesses  and 
neglects,  there  has  never  been  any  end  to  the  tales, 


14  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

while  the  desolations  due  to  accidents  in  the  day's 
work,  on  the  railway,  or  with  horses,  or  upon  scaf- 
foldings of  buildings,  or  in  collapsing  gravel-quarries, 
have  become  almost  a  commonplace.  In  short,  there 
is  no  room  for  sentimentality  about  the  village  life. 
Could  its  annals  be  written  they  would  make  no  idyll  ; 
they  would  be  too  much  stained  by  tragedy  and  vice 
and  misery. 

Yet  the  knowledge  of  aU  this — and  it  was  not 
possible  to  live  here  long  without  such  knowledge — 
left  the  other  impressions  I  have  spoken  of  quite 
unimpaired.  Disorders  were  the  exception,  after  all. 
As  a  general  rule  the  village  character  was  genial, 
steadfast,  self-respecting  ;  one  could  not  but  recognize 
in  it  a  great  fimd  of  strength,  a  great  stability  ;  nor 
could  one  help  feeling  that  its  main  features — the 
limitations  and  the  grimness,  as  well  as  the  surpris- 
ing virtues — were  somehow  closely  related  to  that 
pleasant  order  of  things  suggested  by  the  hay- 
making sounds,  by  the  smell  of  the  wood-smoke, 
by  the  children's  May-day  garlands.  And,  in  fact, 
the  relationship  was  essential.  The  temper  and 
manners  of  the  older  people  turned  out  to  have 
been  actually  moulded  by  conditions  of  a  true  village 
kind,  so  that  the  same  folk-quality  that  sounded 
in  the  little  garland  song  reappeared  more  sternly  in 
my  neighbours'  attitude  towards  their  fate.  Into 
this  valley,  it  is  true,  much  had  never  come  that 
had  flourished  and  been  forgotten  in  English  villages 
elsewhere.     At  no  time  had  there  been  any  of  the 


THE  VILLAGE  15 

more  graceful  folk  arts  here  ;  at  no  time  any  comely 
social  life,  such  as  one  reads  of  in  Goldsmith's 
Deserted  Village  or  Gray's  Elegy  ;  but,  as  I  gradually 
learnt,  the  impoverished  labouring  people  I  talked 
to  had  been,  in  many  cases,  born  in  the  more  pros- 
perous conditions  of  a  self-supporting  peasantry. 

Bit  by  bit  the  truth  come  home  to  me,  in  the 
course  of  unconcerned  gossip,  when  my  informants 
had  no  idea  of  the  significance  of  those  stray  scraps 
of  information  which  they  let  fall.  I  was  not  alive 
to  it  myself  for  a  long  time.  But  when  I  had  heard 
of  the  village  cows,  which  used  to  be  turned  out  to 
graze  on  the  heaths,  and  had  been  told  how  fir- 
timber  fit  for  cottage  roof -joists  could  be  cut  on  the 
common,  as  well  as  heath  good  enough  for  thatching 
and  turf  excellent  for  firing  ;  and  when  to  this  was 
added  the  talk  of  bread-ovens  at  half  the  old  cottages, 
and  of  little  corn-crops  in  the  gardens,  and  of  brewing 
and  wine-making  and  bee-keeping  ;  I  understood  at 
last  that  my  elderly  neighbours  had  seen  with  their 
own  eyes  what  I  should  never  see — namely,  the  old 
rustic  economy  of  the  English  peasantry.  In  that 
light  all  sorts  of  things  showed  a  new  meaning.  I 
looked  with  rather  changed  sentiments,  for  example, 
upon  the  noisome  pigsties — for  were  they  not  a 
survival  of  a  venerable  thrift  ?  I  viewed  the  old 
tools — hoes  and  spades  and  scythes  and  fag-hooks — 
with  quickened  interest ;  and  I  speculated  with 
more  intelligence  upon  those  aged  people  of  the 
parish  whose  curious  habits  were  described  to  me 


i6  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

with  so  much  respect.  But  of  all  the  details  that 
now  gained  significance,  most  to  be  noted  were  the 
hints  of  the  comparative  prosperity  of  that  earlier 
time.  For  now  some  old  woman,  half  starving  on 
her  parish  pay,  would  indicate  this  or  that  little 
cottage,  and  remark  that  her  grandfather  had  built 
it  for  her  mother  to  go  into  when  she  married. 
Or  now,  a  decrepit  man  would  explain  that  in 
such  and  such  a  puzzling  nook  in  the  hillside  had 
once  stood  his  father's  cow-stall.  Here,  at  the  edge 
of  the  arable  strip,  a  building  divided  into  two  poor 
cottages  proved  to  have  been  originally  somebody's 
little  hop-kiln  ;  there,  on  a  warm  slope  given  over 
to  the  pleasure-garden  of  some  "  resident  "  like 
myself,  a  former  villager  used  to  grow  enough  wheat 
to  keep  him  in  flour  half  the  winter  ;  and  there 
again,  down  a  narrow  by-way  gone  ruinous  from 
long  neglect.  Master  So-and-so,  whose  children 
to-day  go  in  fear  of  the  workhouse,  was  wont  to 
drive  his  little  waggon  and  pair  of  horses. 

Particulars  like  these,  pointing  to  a  lost  state  of 
well-being,  accounted  very  well  for  the  attraction 
which,  in  spite  of  individual  faults,  I  had  felt  to- 
wards the  village  folk  in  general.  The  people  stood 
for  something  more  than  merely  themselves.  In 
their  odd  ways  and  talk  and  character  I  was  affected, 
albeit  unawares,  by  a  robust  tradition  of  the  English 
countryside,  surviving  here  when  the  circumstances 
which  would  have  explained  it  had  already  largely 
disappeared.     After  too  many  years  of  undiscern- 


THE  VILLAGE  17 

ment  that  truth  was  apparent  to  me.  And  even  so, 
it  was  but  a  gradual  enlightenment ;  even  now  it 
is  unlikely  that  I  appreciate  the  facts  in  their  deepest 
significance.  For  the  "  robust  "  tradition,  as  I 
have  just  called  it,  was  something  more  than  simply 
robust.  It  was  older,  by  far,  than  this  anomalous 
village.  Imported  into  the  valley — if  my  surmise 
is  correct — by  squatters  two  centuries  ago,  it  was 
already  old  even  then  ;  it  already  had  centuries  of 
experience  behind  it ;  and  though  it  very  likely  had 
lost  much  in  that  removal,  still  it  was  a  genuine 
off -shoot  of  the  home-made  or  "  folk  "  civilization 
of  the  South  of  England.  No  wonder  that  its  sur- 
vivals had  struck  me  as  venerable  and  pleasant, 
when  there  was  so  much  vigorous  English  life 
behind  them,  derived  perhaps  from  so  many  fair 
English  counties. 

The  perception  came  to  me  only  just  in  time,  for 
to-day  the  opportunities  of  further  observation 
occur  but  rarely.  The  old  life  is  being  swiftly 
obliterated.  The  valley  is  passing  out  of  the  hands 
of  its  former  inhabitants.  They  are  being  crowded 
into  corners,  and  are  becoming  as  aliens  in  their  own 
home  ;  they  are  receding  before  newcomers  with  new 
ideas,  and,  greatest  change  of  all,  they  are  yielding 
to  the  dominion  of  new  ideas  themselves.  At 
present,  therefore,  the  cottagers  are  a  most  hetero- 
geneous population,  presenting  all  sorts  of  baffling 
problems  to  those  who  have  to  deal  with  them,  as 
the  schoolmaster  and  the  sanitary  officer  and  others 


i8  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

find.  In  no  two  families — hardly  in  two  members 
of  the  same  family — do  the  old  traditions  survive 
in  equal  degree.  A  lath-and-plaster  partition  may 
separate  people  who  are  half  a  century  asunder  in 
civilization,  and  on  the  same  bench  at  school  may 
be  found  side  by  side  two  children  who  come  from 
homes,  the  one  worthy  of  King  George  III.'s  time, 
the  other  not  unworthy  of  King  George  V.'s.  But 
the  changes  which  will  remove  the  greatest  of  these 
discrepancies  are  proceeding  very  fast  ;  in  another 
ten  years'  time  there  will  be  not  much  left  of  the 
traditional  life  whose  crumbling  away  I  have  been 
witnessing  during  the  twenty  years  that  are  gone. 

Some  grounds  of  hope — great  hope,  too — which 
begin  at  last  to  appear,  and  are  treated  of  in  the 
final  chapter  of  this  book,  save  the  tale  of  Change 
in  the  Village  from  being  quite  a  tragedy,  yet  still 
it  is  a  melancholy  tale.  I  have  dealt  with  it  in  the 
two  sections  called  respectively  "  The  Altered  Cir- 
cumstances "  and  "  The  Resulting  Needs."  The 
earlier  chapters,  which  immediately  follow  this  one 
under  the  heading  "  The  Present  Time,"  are  merely 
descriptive  of  the  people  and  their  conditions  as  I 
know  them  now,  and  aim  at  nothing  more  than  to 
pave  the  way  for  a  clearer  understanding  of  the 
main  subject. 


II 

THE  PRESENT  TIME 


II 

SELF-RELIANCE 

There  is  a  chapter  in  Dickens's  Hard  Times  which 
tells  how  it  was  discovered  that  somebody  had  fallen 
down  a  disused  mine-shaft,  and  how  the  rescue  was 
valiantly  effected  by  a  few  men  who  had  to  be 
awakened  for  that  end  from  their  drunken  Sunday 
afternoon  sleep.  Sobered  by  the  dangers  they  fore- 
saw, these  men  ran  to  the  pit-mouth,  pushed  straight 
to  the  centre  of  the  crowd  there,  and  fell  to  work 
quietly  with  their  ropes  and  winches.  As  you  read, 
you  seem  to  see  them,  spitting  on  their  great  hands 
while  they  knot  the  ropes,  listening  attentively  to  the 
doctor  as  to  an  equal,  and  speaking  in  undertones 
to  one  another,  but  regardless  of  the  remarks  of  the 
bystanders.  The  best  man  amongst  them,  says 
Dickens — and  you  know  it  to  be  true  :  Dickens  could 
have  told  you  the  men's  names  and  life-history  had 
he  chosen — the  best  man  amongst  them  was  the 
greatest  drunkard  of  the  lot  ;  and  when  his  heroic 
work  was  done,  nobody  seems  to  have  taken  any 
farther  notice  of  him. 

These  were  Northcountrymen  ;   but  there  was  a 
quality  about  them  of  which  I  have  often  been 


22  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

reminded,  in  watching  or  hearing  tell  of  the  men  in 
this  Surrey  village.  It  is  the  thing  that  most  im- 
presses all  who  come  into  any  sympathetic  contact 
with  my  neighbours  :  their  readiness  to  make  a 
start  at  the  dangerous  or  disagreeable  task  when 
others  would  be  still  talking,  and  their  apparent 
expectation  that  they  will  succeed.  In  this  spirit 
they  occasionally  do  things  quite  as  well  worthy  of 
mention  as  the  incident  described  by  Dickens.  I 
remember  looking  on  myself  at  just  such  another 
piece  of  work,  in  the  towTi  a  mile  away  from  here, 
one  winter  day.  The  sluggish  "  river,"  as  we  call 
it,  which  flows  amongst  meadows  on  the  south  of 
the  town,  is  usually  fordable  beside  one  of  the 
bridges,  and  men  with  horses  and  carts  as  often  as 
not  drive  through  the  ford,  instead  of  going  over 
the  bridge.  But  on  the  day  I  am  recalling  floods 
had  so  swollen  the  stream  that  a  horse  and  cart  w^ere 
swept  down  under  the  narrow'  bridge,  and  had  got 
jammed  there,  the  driver  having  escaped  over  the 
iron  railings  of  the  bridge  as  the  cart  went  under. 
I  don't  know  what  became  of  him  then — he  was 
but  a  lad,  I  was  told.  When  I  came  on  the  scene,  a 
number  of  people  were  on  the  bridge,  while  many 
more  were  down  on  the  river  banks,  whence  they 
could  see  the  horse  and  cart  under  the  arch.  A  few 
were  bawiing  out  unheeded  advice  as  to  what  should 
be  done  ;  in  fact,  a  heated  altercation  had  arisen 
between  the  two  loudest — a  chimney-sweep  and  a 
medical  man — whose  theories  disagreed  ;  but  it  was 


SELF-RELIANCE  23 

plain  to  everybody  that  it  would  be  a  risky  thing  to 
venture  under  the  bridge  into  that  swirling  stream. 
For  ten  minutes  or  more,  while  the  horse  remained 
invisible  to  us  on  the  bridge,  and  likely  to  drown,  the 
dispute  snapped  angrily  from  bank  to  bank,  punctu- 
ated occasionally  by  excited  cries,  such  as  "  He's 
gettin'  lower  !"  "  He's  sinkin'  down  !"     Then,  un- 
observed, a  bricklayer's  labourer  came  running  with 
a  rope,  which  he  hurriedly  made  into  a  noose  and 
tightened  under  his  armpits.     None  of  the  shouters, 
by  the  way,  had  suggested  such  a  plan.     The  man 
was  helped  over  the  railings  and  swiftly  lowered — 
Heaven  knows  who  took  a  hand  at  that — and  so  he 
disappeared  for  five  minutes.     Then  a  shout  :  the 
horse  came  into  view,  staggering  downstream  with 
harness  cut,  and  scrambled  up  into  the  meadow  ; 
and  the  man,  drenched  and  deadly  white,  and  too 
benumbed  to  help  himself,  was  hauled  up  on  to  the 
bridge,   and  carried  to  the  nearest  inn.     I  never 
heard  his  name — people  of  his  sort,  as  Dickens  knew, 
are  generally  anonymous — but  he  was  one  of  the 
labourers  of  the  locality,  and  only  last  winter  I  saw 
him  shivering  at  the  street  corners  amongst  other 
out-o'-works. 

Behaviour  like  this  is  so  characteristic  of  labouring 
men  that  we  others  expect  it  of  them  as  if  it  were 
especially  their  duty.  Again  and  again  I  have 
noticed  it.  If  a  horse  falls  in  the  street,  ten  chances 
to  one  it  is  some  obscure  labouring  fellow  who  gets 
him  up  again.     Whether  there  is  danger  or  no,  in 


24  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

emergencies  which  demand  readiness  and  disregard 
of  comfort,  the  common  unskilled  labourer  is  always 
to  the  fore.     One  summer  night  I  had  strolled  out 
to  the  top  of  the  road  here  which  slants  down,  over- 
arched by  tall  trees,  past  the  Vicarage.     At  some 
distance  down,  where  there  should  have  been  such  a 
depth  of  darkness  under  the  trees,  I  was  surprised 
to  see  a  little  core  of  light,  where  five  or  six  people 
stood  around  a  bright  lamp,  which  one  of  them  was 
holding.     The  scene  looked  so  theatrical,  glowing 
under  the  trees  with  the  summer  night  all  round  it, 
that,   of  course,   I  had  to  go  down  the  hill  and 
investigate  it.     The  group  I  joined  was,  it  turned 
out,  watching  a  bicyclist  who  lay  unconscious  in 
somebody's    arms,    while   a    doctor   fingered   at   a 
streaming  wound  in  the  man's  forehead,  and  washed 
it,  and  finally  stitched  it  up.     The  bicycle — its  front 
wheel  buckled  by  collision  with  the  Vicarage  gate- 
post— stood   against   the  gate,   and   two   or   three 
cushions  lay  in  the  hedge ;  for  the  Vicar  had  come 
out  to  the  man's  assistance,  and  had  sent  for  the 
doctor,  and  it  was  the  Vicar  himself,  old  and  grey, 
but  steady,  who  now  held  his  library  lamp  for  the 
doctor's  use.     The  rest  of  us  stood  looking  on,  one 
of  us  at  least  feeling  rather  sick  at  the  sight,  and  all 
of  us  as  useless  as  the  night-moths  which  came  out 
from  the  trees  and  fluttered  round  the  lamp.     At 
last,  when  all  was  done,  and  the  injured  man  could 
be  moved,  there  rose  up  a  hitherto  unnoticed  fellow 
who  had  been  supporting  him,  and  I  recognized  one 


SELF-RELIANCE  25 

of  our  village  labourers.  He  looked  faint,  and 
tottered  to  a  chair  which  the  Vicar  had  ready,  and 
gulped  at  some  brandy,  for  he,  too,  had  been  over- 
come by  sight  of  the  surgery.  But  it  was  to  him 
that  the  task  of  sitting  in  the  dusty  road  and  being 
smeared  with  blood  had  fallen. 

And  this  quiet  acceptance  of  the  situation, 
recognizing  that  he  if  anyone  must  suffer,  and  take 
the  hard  place  which  soils  the  clothes  and  shocks  the 
feelings,  gives  the  clue  to  the  average  labourer's 
temper.  It  is  really  very  curious  to  think  of. 
Rarely  can  a  labourer  afford  the  luxury  of  a 
"  change."  Wet  through  though  his  clothes  may 
be,  'or  blood-stained,  or  smothered  with  mud  or  dust, 
he  must  wear  them  until  he  goes  to  bed,  and  must 
put  them  on  again  as  he  finds  them  in  the  morning  ; 
but  this  does  not  excuse  him  in  our  eyes  from  taking 
the  disagreeable  place.  Still  less  does  it  excuse 
him  in  his  own  eyes.  If  you  offer  to  help,  men  of 
this  kind  will  probably  dissuade  you.  "  It'll  make 
yer  clothes  all  dirty,"  they  say  ;  "  you'll  get  in  such 
a  mess."  So  they  assume  the  burden,  sometimes 
surly  and  swearing,  oftener  with  a  good-tempered 
jest. 

To  anything  with  a  touch  of  humour  in  it  they 
will  leap  forward  like  schoolboys.  I  am  reminded 
of  a  funny  incident  one  frosty  morning,  when 
patches  of  the  highway  were  slippery  as  glass. 
Preceding  me  along  the  road  was  a  horse  and  cart, 
driven  by  a  boy  who  stood  upright  in  the  cart,  and 


26  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

seemed  not  to  notice  how  the  horse's  hoofs  were 
skidding  ;  and  some  distance  ahead  three  railway 
navvies  were  approaching,  just  off  their  night's 
work,  and  carrying  their  picks  and  shovels.  I  had 
left  the  cart  behind,  and  was  near  these  three, 
when  suddenly  they  burst  into  a  laugh,  exclaiming 
to  one  another,  "  Look  at  that  old  'oss  !"  I  turned. 
There  sat  the  horse  on  his  tail  between  the  shafts, 
pawing  with  his  forefeet  at  the  road,  but  unable  to 
get  a  grip  at  its  slippery  surface.  It  was  impossible 
not  to  smile  ;  he  had  such  an  absurd  look.  The 
navvies,  however,  did  more  than  smile.  They 
broke  into  a  run  ;  they  saw  immediately  what  to  do. 
In  thirty  seconds  they  were  shovelling  earth  out 
from  the  hedgerow  under  the  horse's  feet,  and  in 
two  minutes  more  he  had  scrambled  up,  unhurt. 

In  such  behaviour,  I  say,  we  have  a  clue  to  the 
labouring-man's  temper.  The  courage,  the  careless- 
ness of  discomfort,  the  swiftness  to  see  what  should 
be  done,  and  to  do  it,  are  not  inspired  by  any 
tradition  of  chivalry,  any  consciously  elaborated 
cult.  It  is  habitual  with  these  men  to  be  ready,  and 
those  fine  actions  which  win  our  admiration  are 
but  chance  disclosures  in  public  of  a  self-reliance 
constantly  practised  by  the  people  amongst  them- 
selves— by  the  women  quite  as  much  as  by  the  men 
— under  stress  of  necessity,  one  would  say  at  first 
sight.  Take  another  example  of  the  same  willing 
efficiency  applied  in  rather  a  different  way.     In  a 


SELF-RELIANCE  27 

cottage  near  to  where  I  am  writing  a  young  labourer 
died  last  summer — a  young  unmarried  man,  whose 
mother  was  living  with  him,  and  had  long  depended 
on  his  support.  Eighteen  months  earlier  he  had 
been  disabled  for  a  week  or  two  by  the  kick  of  a 
horse,  and  a  heart-disease  of  long  standing  was  so 
aggravated  by  the  accident  that  he  was  never  again 
able  to  do  much  work.  There  came  months  of 
unemployment,  and  as  a  consequence  he  was  in 
extreme  poverty  when  he  died.  His  mother  was 
already  reduced  to  parish  relief  ;  it  was  only  by  the 
help  of  his  two  sisters — young  women  out  at  service, 
who  managed  to  pay  for  a  coffin  for  him — that  a 
pauper's  funeral  was  avoided.  A  labourer's  wife, 
the  mother  of  four  or  five  young  children,  took  upon 
herself  the  duty  of  washing  and  laying  out  the  corpse, 
but  there  remained  still  the  funeral  to  be  managed. 
An  undertaker  to  conduct  it  could  not  be  engaged  ; 
there  was  no  money  to  pay  him.  Then,  however, 
neighbours  took  the  matter  up,  not  as  an  unwonted 
thing,  I  may  say — it  is  usual  with  them  to  help 
bury  a  "  mate  " — only,  as  a  rule,  there  is  the 
undertaker  too.  In  this  case  they  did  without  him — 
six  poor  men  losing  half  a  day's  work,  and  giving 
their  services.  The  coffin  was  too  big  to  be  carried 
down  the  crooked  staircase  ;  too  big  also  to  be  got 
out  of  the  bedroom  window  until  the  window- 
sashes  had  been  taken  out.  But  these  men  managed 
it  all,  borrowing  tools  and  a  couple  of  ladders  and 
some  ropes  ;  and  then,  in  the  black  clothes  which  they 


28  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

keep  for  such  occasions,  they  carried  the  coffin  to 
the  churchyard.  That  same  evening  two  of  them 
went  to  work  at  cleaning  out  a  cess-pit,  two  others 
spent  the  evening  in  their  gardens,  another  had  cows 
to  milk,  and  the  sixth,  being  out  of  work  and  restless, 
had  no  occupation  to  go  home  to  so  far  as  I  know. 

Of  course  this,  too,  was  a  piece  of  voluntary 
service,  resembling  in  that  respect  those  more 
striking  examples  of  self-reliance  which  are  brought 
out  by  sudden  emergencies.  But  it  points,  more 
directly  than  they  do,  to  the  sphere  in  which  that 
virtue  is  practised  until  it  becomes  a  habit.  For  if 
you  follow  the  clue  on,  it  leads  very  quickly  to  the 
scene  where  self-reliance  is  so  to  speak  at  home, 
where  it  seems  the  natural  product  of  the  people's 
circumstances — the  scene,  namely,  of  their  daily 
work.  For  there,  not  only  in  the  employment  by 
which  the  men  earn  their  wages,  but  in  the  house- 
hold and  garden  work  of  the  women  as  well  as  the 
men,  there  is  nothing  to  support  them  save  their  own 
readiness,  their  own  personal  force. 

It  sounds  a  truism,  but  it  is  worth  attention. 
Unlike  the  rest  of  us,  labouring  people  are  unable  to 
shirk  any  of  life's  discomforts  by  "  getting  a  man  " 
or  "  a  woman,"  as  we  say,  to  do  the  disagreeable 
or  risky  jobs  which  continually  need  to  be  done. 
If  a  cottager  in  this  village  wants  his  chimney  swept, 
or  his  pigstye  cleaned  out,  or  his  firewood  chopped, 
the  only  "  man  "  he  can  get  to  do  it  for  him  is 
himself.     Similarly  with  his  wife.     She  may  not  call 


SELF-RELIANCE  29 

in  "  a  woman  "  to  scrub  her  floor,  or  to  wash  and 
mend,  or  to  skin  a  rabbit  for  dinner,  or  to  make  up 
the  fire  for  cooking  it.  It  is  necessary  for  her  to  be 
ready  to  turn  from  one  task  to  another  without 
squeamishness,  and  without  pausing  to  think  how 
she  shall  do  it.  In  short,  she  and  her  husband  alike 
must  practise,  in  their  daily  doings,  a  sort  of  intre- 
pidity which  grows  customary  with  them  ;  and  this 
habit  is  the  parent  of  much  of  that  fine  conduct 
which  they  exhibit  so  carelessly  in  moments  of 
emergency. 

Until  this  fact  is  appreciated  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  understanding  the  people's  disposition.  It  is  the 
principal  gateway  that  lets  you  in  to  their  character. 
Nevertheless  the  subject  needs  no  further  illustra- 
tion here.  Anyone  personally  acquainted  with  the 
villagers  knows  how  their  life  is  one  continuous  act  of 
unconscious  self-reliance,  and  those  who  have  not 
seen  it  for  themselves  will  surely  discover  plentiful 
evidences  of  it  in  the  following  pages,  if  they  read 
between  the  lines. 

But  I  must  digress  to  remark  upon  one  aspect  of 
the  matter.  In  view  of  the  subject  of  this  book — 
namely,  the  transition  from  an  old  social  order  to 
present  times — it  should  be  considered  whether  the 
handiness  of  the  villagers  is  after  all  quite  so  natural 
a  thing  as  is  commonly  supposed.  For  a  long  time 
I  took  it  for  granted.  The  people's  accomplish- 
ments were  rough,  I  admit,  and  not  knowing  how 
much  "  knack  "  or  experience  was  involved  in  the 


30  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

dozens  of  odd  jobs  that  they  did,  I  assumed  that 
they  did  them  by  the  light  of  Nature,  Yet  if  we 
reflect  how  little  we  learn  from  Nature,  and  how 
helpless  people  grow  after  two  or  three  generations 
of  life  in  slums,  or  in  libraries  and  drawing-rooms, 
it  would  seem  probable  that  there  is  more  than 
appears  on  the  surface  in  the  labourer's  versatility 
of  usefulness.  After  all,  who  would  know  by  the 
light  of  Nature  how  to  go  about  sweeping  a  chimney, 
as  they  used  to  do  it  here,  with  rope  and  furze- 
bush  dragged  down  ?  or  how  to  scour  out  a  water- 
tank  effectively  ?  or  where  to  begin  upon  cleaning 
a  pigstye  ?  Easy  though  it  looks,  the  closer  you 
get  down  to  this  kind  of  work  as  the  cottager  does 
it  the  more  surprisedly  do  you  discover  that  he 
recognizes  right  and  wrong  methods  of  doing  it ; 
and  my  own  belief  is  that  the  necessity  which  com- 
pels the  people  to  be  their  own  servants  would  not 
make  them  so  adaptable  as  they  are,  were  there  not, 
at  the  back  of  them,  a  time-honoured  tradition 
teaching  them  how  to  go  on. 

Retunring  from  this  digression,  and  speaking,  too, 
rather  of  a  period  from  ten  to  twenty  years  ago  than 
of  the  present  time,  it  would  be  foolish  to  pretend 
that  the  people's  good  qualities  were  unattended 
by  defects.  The  men  had  a  very  rough  exterior,  so 
rough  that  I  have  known  them  to  inspire  timidity 
in  the  respectable  who  met  them  on  the  road,  and 
especially  at  night,   when,   truth  to  tell,  those  of 


SELF-RELIANCE  31 

them  who  were  out  were  not  always  too  sober. 
After  you  got  to  know  them,  so  as  to  understand  the 
shut  of  their  mouths  and  the  look  of  their  eyes — 
usually  very  steadfast  and  quiet — you  knew  that 
there  was  rarely  any  harm  in  them  ;  but  I  admit  that 
their  aspect  was  unpromising  enough  at  first  sight. 
A  stranger  might  have  been  forgiven  for  thinking 
them  coarse,  ignorant,  stupid,  beery,  unclean.  And 
yet  there  was  excuse  for  much  of  it,  while  much  more 
of  it  was  sheer  ill-fortune,  and  needed  no  excuse. 
Though  many  of  the  men  were  physically  powerful, 
few  of  them  could  boast  of  any  physical  comeliness. 
Their  strength  had  been  bought  dear,  at  the  cost  of 
heavy  labour  begun  too  early  in  life,  so  that  before 
middle-age  they  were  bent  in  the  back,  or  gone 
wrong  at  the  knees,  and  their  walk  (some  of  them 
walked  miles  every  day  to  their  work)  was  a  long 
shambling  stride,  fast  enough,  but  badly  wanting 
in  suggest iveness  of  personal  pride.  Seeing  them 
casually  in  their  heavy  and  uncleanly  clothes,  no  one 
would  have  dreamed  of  the  great  qualities  in  them — 
the  kindliness  and  courage  and  humour,  the  readi- 
ness to  help,  the  self-control,  the  patience.  It  was 
all  there,  but  they  took  no  pains  to  look  the  part ; 
they  did  not  show  off. 

In  fact,  their  tendency  was  rather  in  the  contrary 
direction.  They  cared  too  little  what  was  thought 
of  them  to  be  at  the  pains  of  shocking  one's  delicacy 
intentionally ;  but  they  were  by  no  means  dis- 
pleased to  be  thought   "  rough."     It  made  them 


32  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE  ' 

laugh  ;  it  was  a  tribute  to  their  stout-heartedness. 
Nor  was  there  anything  necessarily  braggart  in  this 
attitude  of  theirs.  As  they  realized  that  work 
would  not  be  readily  offered  to  a  man  who  might 
quail  before  its  unpleasantness,  so  it  was  a  matter 
of  bread-and-cheese  to  them  to  cultivate  "  rough- 
ness." I  need  not,  indeed,  be  writing  in  the  past 
tense  here.  It  is  still  bad  policy  for  a  workman  to 
be  nice  in  his  feelings,  and  several  times  I  have  had 
men  excuse  themselves  for  a  weakness  which  they 
knew  me  to  share,  but  which  they  seemed  to  think 
needed  apology  when  they,  too,  exhibited  it.  Only 
a  few  weeks  ago  a  neighbour's  cat,  affected  with 
mange,  was  haunting  my  garden,  and  had  become 
a  nuisance.  Upon  my  asking  the  owner — a  labourer 
who  had  worked  up  to  be  something  of  a  bricklayer 
— to  get  rid  of  it,  he  said  he  would  get  a  certain  old- 
fashioned  neighbour  to  kill  it,  and  then  he  plunged 
into  sheepish  explanations  why  he  would  rather  not 
do  the  deed  himself.  "  Anybody  else's  cat,"  he 
urged,  "  he  wouldn't  mind  so  much,"  but  he  had  a 
touch  of  softness  towards  his  own.  It  was  plain 
that  in  reality  he  was  a  man  of  tender  feelings,  yet 
it  was  no  less  plain  that  he  was  unwilling  to  be 
thought  too  tender.  The  curious  thing  was  that 
neither  of  us  considered  for  a  moment  the  possibility 
of  any  reluctance  staying  the  hand  of  the  older 
neighbour.  Him  we  both  knew  fairly  well  as  a  man 
of  that  earlier  period  with  which  I  am  concerned 
just  now.     At  that  period  the  village  in  general  had 


SELF-RELIANCE  33 

a  lofty  contempt  for  the  "  meek-hearted "  man 
capable  of  flinching.  An  employer  might  have 
qualms,  though  the  men  thought  no  better  of  him 
for  that  possession,  but  amongst  themselves  flinching 
was  not  much  other  than  a  vice.  In  fact,  they 
dared  not  be  delicate.  Hence  through  all  their 
demeanour  they  displayed  a  hardness  which  in  some 
cases  went  far  below  the  surface,  and  approached 
real  brutality. 

Leaving  out  the  brutality,  the  women  were  not 
very  different  from  the  men.  It  might  have  been 
supposed  that  their  domestic  work — the  cooking  and 
cleaning  and  sewing  from  which  middle-class  women 
seem  often  to  derive  so  comely  a  manner — would 
have  done  something  to  soften  these  cottage  women. 
But  it  rarely  worked  out  so.  The  women  shared 
the  men's  carelessness  and  roughness.  That  tender- 
ness which  an  emergency  discovered  in  them  was 
hidden  in  everyday  life  under  manners  indicative 
of  an  unfeigned  contempt  for  what  was  gentle,  what 
was  soft. 

And  this,  too,  was  reasonable.  In  theory,  perhaps, 
the  women  should  have  been  refined  by  their  house- 
keeping work  ;  in  practice  that  work  necessitated 
their  being  very  tough.  Cook,  scullery-maid,  bed- 
maker,  charwoman,  laundress,  children's  nurse — it 
fell  to  every  mother  of  a  family  to  play  all  the  parts 
in  turn  every  day,  and  if  that  were  all,  there  was 
opportunity  enough  for  her  to  excel.  But  the 
conveniences  which  make  such  work  tolerable  in 

3 


34  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

other  households  were  not  to  be  found  in  the  cottage. 
Everything  had  to  be  done  practically  in  one  room — 
which  was  sometimes  a  sleeping-room  too,  or  say 
in  one  room  and  a  wash-house.  The  preparation 
and  serving  of  meals,  the  airing  of  clothes  and  the 
ironing  of  them,  the  washing  of  the  children,  the 
mending  and  making — how  could  a  woman  do  any 
of  it  with  comfort  in  the  cramped  apartment,  into 
which,  moreover,  a  tired  and  dirty  man  came  home 
in  the  evening  to  eat  and  wash  and  rest,  or  if  not  to 
rest,  then  to  potter  in  and  out  from  garden  or  pig- 
stye,  "  treading  in  dirt  "  as  he  came  ?  Then,  too, 
many  cottages  had  not  so  much  as  a  sink  where 
work  with  water  could  be  done  ;  many  had  no  water 
save  in  wet  weather  ;  there  was  not  one  cottage  in 
which  it  could  be  drawn  from  a  tap,  but  it  all  had 
to  be  fetched  from  well  or  tank.  And  in  the  hus- 
band's absence  at  work,  it  was  the  woman's  duty — 
one  more  added  to  so  many  others — to  bring  water 
indoors.  In  times  of  drought  water  had  often  to  be 
carried  long  distances  in  pails,  and  it  may  be 
imagined  how  the  housework  would  go  in  such 
circumstances.  For  my  part  I  have  nev^er  wondered 
at  roughness  or  squalor  in  the  village  since  that 
parching  summer  when  I  learnt  that  in  one  cottage 
at  least  the  people  were  saving  up  the  cooking  water 
of  one  day  to  be  used  over  again  on  the  day  following. 
Where  such  things  can  happen  the  domestic  arts  are 
simplified  to  nothing,  and  it  would  be  madness  in 
women  to  cultivate  refinement  or  niceness. 


SELF-RELIANCE  35 

And  my  neighbours  appeared  not  to  wish  to 
cultivate  them.  It  may  be  added  that  many  of  the 
women — the  numbers  are  diminishing  rapidly — were 
field-workers  who  had  never  been  brought  up  to 
much  domesticity.  Far  beyond  the  valley  they  had 
to  go  to  earn  money  at  hop-tying,  haymaking, 
harvesting,  potato-picking,  swede-trimming,  and  at 
such  work  they  came  immediately,  just  as  the  men 
did,  under  conditions  which  made  it  a  vice  to  flinch. 
As  a  rule  they  would  leave  work  in  the  afternoon  in 
time  to  get  home  and  cook  a  meal  in  readiness  for 
their  husbands  later,  and  at  that  hour  one  saw  them 
on  the  roads  trudging  along,  under  the  burden  of 
coats,  dinner-baskets,  tools,  and  so  on,  very 
dishevelled — for  at  field-work  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  care  for  the  toilet — but  often  chatting  not 
unhappily. 

On  the  roads,  too,  women  were,  and  still  are, 
frequently  noticeable,  bringing  home  on  their  backs 
faggots  of  dead  wood,  or  sacks  of  fir-cones,  picked 
up  in  the  fir-woods  a  mile  away  or  more.  Prodigious 
and  unwieldy  loads  these  were.  I  have  often  met 
women  bent  nearly  double  under  them,  toiling  pain- 
fully along,  with  hats  or  bonnets  pushed  awry  and 
skirts  draggling.  Occasionally  tiny  urchins,  too 
small  to  be  left  at  home  alone,  would  be  clinging  to 
their  mothers'  frocks. 

In  the  scanty  leisure  that  the  women  might  enjoy 
— say  now  and  then  of  an  afternoon — there  were  not 
many  circumstances  to  counteract  the  hardness  con- 


36  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

traded  at  their  work.  These  off  times  were  oppor- 
tunities for  social  intercourse  between  them.  They 
did  not  leave  home,  however,  and  go  out  "  paying 
calls."  Unless  on  Sunday  evenings  visiting  one 
another's  cottages  was  not  desirable.  But  there 
were  other  resources.  I  have  mentioned  how  sounds 
will  travel  across  the  valley,  and  I  have  known 
women  come  to  their  cottage  doors  high  up  on  this 
side  to  carry  on  a  shouting  conversation  with 
neighbours  opposite,  four  hundred  yards  away.  You 
see,  they  were  under  no  constraint  of  propriety  in 
its  accepted  forms,  nor  did  they  care  greatly  who 
heard  what  they  had  to  say.  I  have  sometimes 
wished  that  they  did  care.  But,  of  course,  the  more 
comfortable  way  of  intercourse  was  to  talk  across  the 
quickset  hedge  between  two  gardens.  Sometimes 
one  would  hear — all  an  afternoon  it  seemed — the 
long  drone  of  one  of  these  confabulations  going  on 
in  unbroken  flow,  with  little  variation  of  cadence, 
save  for  a  moaning  rise  and  fall,  like  the  wind 
through  a  keyhole.  I  have  a  suspicion  that  the 
shortcomings  of  neighbours  often  made  the  staple  of 
such  conversations,  but  that  is  only  a  surmise.  I 
remember  the  strange  conclusion  of  one  of  them 
which  reached  my  ears.  For,  as  the  women  reluct- 
antly parted,  they  raised  their  voices,  and  one  said 
piously,  "  Wal,  they'll  git  paid  for  't,  one  o'  these 
days.  Gawd  A'mighty's  above  the  Devil "  ;  to 
which  the  other,  with  loud  conviction  :  "  Yes,  and 
always   will   be,    thank   Gawd  !"     This   ended   the 


SELF-RELIANCE  37 

talk.  But  the  last  speaker,  turning  round,  saw  her 
two-year-old  daughter  asprawl  in  the  garden,  and 
with  sudden  change  from  satisfied  drawl  to  shrill 
exasperation,  "  Git  up  out  of  all  that  muck,  you 
dirty  little  devil,"  she  said.  For  she  was  a  cleanly 
woman,  proud  of  her  children,  and  disliking  to  see 
them  untidy. 


^.^ 


r^^^f 


Ill 

MAN  AND  WIFE 

For  general  social  intercourse  the  labouring  people 
do  not  meet  at  one  another's  cottages,  going  out  by 
invitation,  or  dropping  in  to  tea  in  the  casual  way 
of  friendship  ;  they  have  to  be  content  with  "  pass- 
ing the  time  of  day  "  when  they  come  together  by 
chance.  Thus  two  families  may  mingle  happily  as 
they  stroll  homewards  after  the  Saturday  night's 
shopping  in  the  town,  or  on  a  fine  Sunday  evening 
they  may  make  up  little  parties  to  go  and  inspect 
one  another's  gardens. 

Until  recently — so  recently  that  the  slight  change 
may  be  ignored  at  least  for  the  present — the  pre- 
vailing note  of  this  so  restricted  intercourse  was  a 
sort  of  bonhomie,  or  good  temper  and  good  sense. 
With  this  for  a  guide,  the  people  had  no  need  of  the 
etiquette  called  "  good  manners,"  but  were  at 
liberty  to  behave  as  they  liked,  and  talk  as  they 
liked,  within  the  bounds  of  neighbourliness  and 
civility.  This  has  always  been  one  of  the  most 
conspicuous  things  about  the  people — this  inde- 
pendence of  conventions.  In  few  other  grades  of 
society  could  men  and  women  dare  to  be  so  out- 

38 


MAN  AND  WIFE  39 

spoken  together,  so  much  at  ease,  as  these  villagers 
still  often  are.  Their  talk  grows  Chaucerian  at 
times.  Merrily,  or  seriously,  as  the  case  may  be, 
subjects  are  spoken  of  which  are  never  alluded  to 
between  men  and  women  who  respect  our  ordinary 
conventions. 

Let  it  be  admitted — if  anybody  wishes  to  feel 
superior — that  the  women  must  be  wanting  in 
"  delicacy  "  to  countenance  such  things.  There  are 
other  aspects  of  the  matter  which  are  better  worth 
considering.  Approaching  it,  for  instance,  from  an 
opposite  point  of  view,  one  perceives  that  the 
average  country  labourer  can  talk  with  less  restraint 
because  he  has  really  less  to  conceal  than  many 
men  who  look  down  upon  him.  He  may  use  coarse 
words,  but  his  thoughts  are  wont  to  be  cleanly,  so 
that  there  is  no  suspicion  of  foulness  behind  his 
conversation,  rank  though  it  sound.  A  woman 
consequently  may  hear  what  he  says,  and  not  be 
offended  by  suggestion  of  something  left  unsaid. 
On  these  terms  the  jolly  tale  is  a  jolly  tale,  and  ends 
at  that.  It  does  not  linger  to  corrupt  the  mind  with 
an  unsavoury  after-flavour. 

But  more  than  this  is  indicated  by  the  want  of 
conventional  manners  in  the  village.  The  main 
fact  is  that  the  two  sexes,  each  engaged  daily  upon 
essential  duties,  stand  on  a  surprising  equality  the 
one  to  the  other.  And  where  the  men  are  so  well 
aware  of  the  women's  experienced  outlook,  and  the 
women  so  well  aware  of  the  men's,  the  affectation 


40  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

of  ignorance  might  almost  be  construed  as  a  form  of 
immodesty,  or  at  any  rate  as  an  imprudence.  It 
would,  indeed,  be  too  absurd  to  pretend  that  these 
wives  and  mothers,  who  have  to  face  every  trial  of 
life  and  death  for  themselves,  do  not  know  the 
things  which  obviously  they  cannot  help  knowing  ; 
too  absurd  to  treat  them  as  though  they  were  all 
innocence,  and  timidity,  and  daintiness.  No  labour- 
ing man  would  esteem  a  woman  for  delicacy  of  that 
kind,  and  the  women  certainly  would  not  like  to  be 
esteemed  for  it.  Hence  the  sexes  habitually  meet 
on  almost  level  terms.  And  the  absence  of  con- 
vention extends  to  a  neglect — nay,  to  a  dislike — of 
ordinary  graceful  courtesies  between  them.  So  far 
as  I  have  seen  they  observe  no  ceremonial.  The 
men  are  considerate  to  spare  women  the  more 
exhausting  or  arduous  kinds  of  work  ;  but  they  will 
let  a  woman  open  the  door  for  herself,  and  wiU  be 
careless  when  they  are  together  who  stands  or  who 
sits,  or  which  of  them  walks  on  the  inside  of  the 
path,  or  goes  first  into  a  gateway.  And  the  women 
look  for  nothing  different.  They  expect  to  be  treated 
as  equals.  If  a  cottage  woman  found  that  a  cottage 
man  was  raising  his  hat  to  her,  she  would  be  aflame 
with  indignation,  and  would  let  him  know  very 
plainly  indeed  that  she  was  not  that  sort  of  fine  lady. 
In  general,  the  relations  between  the  sexes  are 
too  matter-of-fact  to  permit  of  any  refinement  of 
feeling  about  them,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that 
illegitimacy  has  been  very  common  in  the  village. 


MAN  AND  WIFE  41 

But  once  a  man  and  a  woman  are  married,  they 
settle  down  into  a  sober  pair  of  comrades,  and 
instead  of  the  looseness  which  might  be  looked  for 
there  is  on  the  whole  a  remarkable  fidelity  between 
the  married  couples.  I  have  no  distinct  memory 
of  having  heard  during  twenty  years  of  any  certain 
case  of  intrigue  or  conjugal  misbeha^'■iour  amongst 
the  cottage  folk.  The  people  seem  to  leave  that 
sort  of  thing  to  the  employing  classes.  It  scanda- 
lizes them  to  hear  of  it.  They  despise  it.  Oddly 
enough,  this  may  be  partly  due  to  the  want  of  a 
feminine  ideal,  such  as  is  developed  by  help  of  our 
middle-class  arts  and  recognized  in  our  conventions. 
True,  the  business  of  making  both  ends  meet 
provides  the  labourer  and  his  wife  with  enough  to 
think  about,  especially  when  the  children  begin  to 
come.  Then,  too,  they  have  no  luxuries  to  pamper 
their  flesh,  no  lazy  hours  in  which  to  grow  wanton. 
The  severity  of  the  man's  daily  labour  keeps  him 
quiet ;  the  woman,  drudge  that  she  is,  soon  loses  the 
surface  charm  that  would  excite  admirers.  But 
when  all  this  is  said,  it  remains  probable  that  a 
lowliness  in  their  ideal  preserves  the  villagers  from 
temptation.  They  do  not  put  woman  on  a  pedestal 
to  be  worshipped  ;  they  are  unacquainted  with  the 
finer,  more  sensitive,  more  high-strung  possibilities 
of  her  nature.  People  who  have  been  affected  by 
long  traditions  of  chivalry,  or  by  the  rich  influences 
of  art,  are  in  another  case  ;  but  here  amongst  the 
labouring  folk  a  woman  is  not   seen  through  the 


42  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

medium  of  any  cherished  theories  ;  she  is  merely  an 
individual  woman,  a  man's  comrade  and  helper,  and 
the  mother  of  his  family.  It  is  a  fine  thing,  though, 
about  the  unions  effected  on  these  unromantic 
terms,  that  they  usually  last  long,  the  man  and  wife 
growing  more  affectionate,  more  tender,  more 
trustful,  as  they  advance  in  years. 

Of  course,  the  marriages  are  not  invariably  com- 
fortable or  even  tolerable.  One  hears  sometimes  of 
men  callously  disappearing — deserting  their  wives 
for  a  period,  and  going  off,  as  if  for  peace,  to  distant 
parts  wherever  there  is  work  to  be  picked  up.  One 
man,  I  remember,  was  reported  to  have  said,  when 
he  ultimately  reappeared,  that  he  had  gone  away 
because  "  he  thought  it  would  do  his  wife  good." 
Another,  who  had  openly  quarrelled  with  his  wife 
and  departed,  was  discovered  months  afterwards 
working  in  a  Sussex  harvest-field.  He  came  back 
by-and-by,  and  now  for  years  the  couple  have  been 
living  together,  not  without  occasional  brawls,  it's 
true,  but  in  the  main  good  comrades,  certainly  help- 
ful to  one  another,  and  very  fond  of  their  two  or 
three  children.  A  bad  case  was  that  of  a  bullying 
railway  navvy,  who,  having  knocked  his  wife  about 
and  upset  his  old  father,  went  off  ostensibly  to  work. 
In  reality  he  made  his  way  by  train  to  a  town  some 
ten  miles  distant,  and  from  there,  in  a  drunken 
frolic,  sent  a  telegram  home  to  his  wife  announcing 
that  he  was  dead.  He  had  given  no  particulars  :  a 
long  search  for  him  followed,  and  he  was  found  some 


MAN  AND  WIFE  43 

days  later  in  a  public-house  of  that  town  vain- 
gloriously  drinking.  I  remember  that  Bettesworth, 
who  told  me  this  tale,  was  full  of  indignation. 
"  Shouldn't  you  think  he  could  be  punished  for 
that  ?"  he  asked.  "  There,  if  I  had  my  way  he 
should  have  twelve  months  reg'lar  hard  labour,  and 
see  if  that  wouldn't  dummer  a  little  sense  into  'n." 
There  was  no  suggestion,  however,  of  "a  woman  in 
the  case,"  to  explain  this  man's  ill-treatment  of  his 
wife  ;  it  appears  to  have  been  simply  a  piece  of 
freakish  brutality. 

When  disagreements  occur,  it  is  likely  that  the 
men  are  oftener  to  blame  than  their  wives.  Too 
often  I  have  seen  some  woman  or  other  of  the  village 
getting  her  drunken  and  abusive  husband  home,  and 
never  once  have  I  seen  it  the  other  way  about. 
Nevertheless,  in  some  luckless  households  the  faults 
are  on  the  woman's  side,  and  it  is  the  man  who  has 
the  heartache.  I  knew  one  man — a  most  steady 
and  industrious  fellow,  in  constant  work  which  kept 
him  from  home  all  day — whose  wife  became  a  sort 
of  parasite  on  him  in  the  interest  of  her  own  thriftless 
relatives.  In  his  absence  her  brothers  and  sisters 
were  at  his  table  eating  at  his  expense  ;  food  and 
coals  bought  with  his  earnings  found  their  way  to 
her  mother's  cottage  ;  in  short,  he  had  "  married  the 
family,"  as  they  say.  He  knew  it,  too.  In  its 
trumpery  way  the  affair  was  an  open  scandal,  and 
the  neighbours  dearly  wished  to  see  him  put  a  stop 
to  it.    Yet,  though  he  would  have  had  public  opinion 


44  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

to  support  him  in  taking  strong  measures,  his  own 
good  nature  deterred  him  from  doing  so.  Probably, 
too,  his  own  course  was  the  happier  one.  Thrive  he 
never  could,  and  gloomy  enough  and  dispirited 
enough  he  used  to  look  at  times  ;  yet  to  see  him  with 
his  children  on  Sundays — two  or  three  squalid, 
laughing  urchins — was  to  see  a  very  acceptable 
sight. 

Returning  to  the  main  point,  if  anyone  has  a  taste 
for  ugly  behaviour,  and  thinks  nothing  "  real  "  but 
what  is  uncomfortable  too,  he  may  find  plenty  of 
subjects  for  study  in  the  married  life  of  this  parish  ; 
but  he  will  be  ridiculously  mistaken  if  he  supposes 
the  ugliness  to  be  normal.  A  kind  of  dogged  com- 
radeship— I  can  find  no  better  word  for  it — is  what 
commonly  unites  the  labouring  man  and  his  wife  ; 
they  are  partners  and  equals  running  their  impe- 
cunious affairs  by  mutual  help.  I  was  lately  able 
to  observe  a  man  and  woman  after  a  removal  settling 
down  into  their  new  quarters.  It  was  the  most 
ordinary,  matter-of-fact  affair  in  the  world.  The 
man,  uncouth  and  strong,  like  a  big  dog  or  an  amiable 
big  boy,  moved  about  willingly  under  his  wife's 
direction,  doing  the  various  jobs  that  required 
strength.  One  evening,  in  rain,  his  wife  stood 
watching  while  he  chopped  away  the  wet  summer 
grass  that  had  grown  tall  under  the  garden  hedge  ; 
then  she  pointed  out  four  or  five  spots  against  the 
hedge,  where  he  proceeded  to  put  in  wooden  posts. 
Early  the  next  morning  there  was  a  clothes-line 


MAN  AND  WIFE  45 

between  the  posts,  and  the  household  washing  was 
hanging  from  it.  Nothing  could  have  been  more 
commonplace  than  the  whole  incident,  but  the 
commonness  was  the  beauty  of  it.  And  it  was  done 
somehow  in  a  way  that  warmed  one  to  a  feeling  of 
great  liking  for  those  two  people. 

Very  often  it  seems  to  be  the  woman  who  supplies 
the  brains,  and  does  the  scheming,  for  the  partner- 
ship. When  old  Bettesworth  was  on  his  last  legs,  as 
many  as  half  a  dozen  different  men  applied  to  me 
for  his  job,  of  whom  one,  I  very  well  remember, 
apologized  for  troubling  me,  but  said  his  "  missus  " 
told  him  to  come.  Poor  chap !  it  was  his  idea  of 
courtesy  to  offer  an  apology,  and  it  was  the  Old 
Adam  in  him  that  laid  the  blame  on  his  wife,  for 
really  he  desired  very  much  to  escape  from  his 
arduous  night-work  on  the  railway.  At  the  same 
time  there  is  not  the  least  doubt  that  what  he  said 
was  true  ;  that  he  and  his  wife  had  talked  the 
matter  over,  and  that,  when  he  proved  timid  of 
interviewing  me,  she  forced  him  to  come.  Again, 
two  or  three  winters  ago,  a  man  despairing  of  work 
in  England  got  in  touch  with  some  agency  to  assist 
him  in  emigrating  to  Canada.  It  was  his  wife  then 
who  went  round  the  parish  trying  to  raise  the  few 
extra  pounds  that  he  was  to  contribute.  That  was 
a  case  to  fill  comfortable  people  with  uncomfortable 
shame.  The  woman,  not  more  than  five-and-twenty, 
would  have  been  strikingly  handsome  if  she  had 
ever  in  her  life  had  a  fair  chance  ;  but  as  it  was  she 


46  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

looked  half-starved,  and  she  had  a  cough  which 
made  it  doubtful  if  she  would  ever  live  to  follow  her 
husband  to  Canada.  Still,  she  was  playing  her  part 
as  the  man's  comrade.  As  soon  as  he  could  save 
enough  money  he  was  to  send  for  her  and  her  baby, 
she  said  ;  in  the  meantime  she  would  have  to  earn 
her  own  living  by  going  out  to  day-work. 

During  the  South  African  War  there  was  many  a 
woman  in  the  village  keeping  things  together  at  home 
while  the  men  were  at  the  front.  They  had  to  work 
and  earn  money  just  as  they  do  when  their  men  are 
beaten  down  at  home.  There  was  one  woman  who 
received  from  her  husband  a  copy  of  verses  com- 
posed by  him  and  his  companions  during  their 
occupation  of  a  block-house  on  the  veldt.  Very 
proud  of  him,  she  took  the  verses  to  a  printer,  had 
them  printed — just  one  single  copy — and  then  had 
the  printed  copy  framed  to  hang  on  the  bedroom 
wall  in  her  cottage.  Her  husband  showed  it  to  me 
there  one  day,  mightily  pleased  with  it  and  her. 

Probably  the  people  behind  the  counters  at  the 
provision  shops  in  the  town  could  teU  many  inter- 
esting things  about  the  relations  between  married 
people  of  this  class,  for  it  is  quite  the  common  thing 
in  the  villages  for  a  man  and  wife  to  lock  up  their 
cottage  on  a  Saturday  evening,  and  go  off  with  the 
children  to  do  the  week's  shopping  together.  On  a 
nice  night  the  town  becomes  thronged  with  them, 
and  so  do  the  shops,  outside  which,  now  and  then,  a 
passer-by  may  notice  little  consultations  going  on, 


MAN  AND  WIFE  47 

and  husband  or  wife — sometimes  one,  sometimes  the 
other — handing  over  precious  money  to  the  other 
to  be  spent.  And  if  it  is  rather  painful  to  see  the 
faces  grow  so  strained  and  anxious  over  such  trifling 
sums,  on  the  other  hand  the  signs  of  mutual  confi- 
dence and  support  are  comforting.  Besides,  anxiety 
is  not  the  commonest  note.  The  majority  of  the 
people  make  a  little  weekly  festivity  of  this  Saturday 
night's  outing  ;  they  meet  their  friends  in  the  street, 
have  a  chat,  wind  up  with  a  visit  to  the  public -house, 
and  so  homewards  at  any  time  between  seven  and 
ten  o'clock,  trooping  up  the  hill  happily  enough  as  a 
rule.  Now  and  then  one  comes  across  solitary 
couples  making  one  another  miserable.  Thus  one 
night  I  heard  a  woman's  voice  in  the  dark,  very  tired 
and  faint,  say,  "  It's  a  long  hill !"  to  which  the  surly 
tones  of  a  man  replied  :  "  'Ten't  no  longer  than 
'twas,  is  it  ?"  Brutishness  like  this,  however,  is 
quite  the  exception. 

As  a  sample  of  what  is  normal,  take  the  following 
scraps  of  talk  overheard  one  summer  night  some 
years  ago.  The  people  were  late  that  night,  and 
indeed,  it  was  pleasant  to  be  out.  Not  as  yet  were 
there  any  of  those  street  lamps  along  the  road  which 
now  make  all  nights  alike  dingy  ;  but  one  felt  as  if 
walking  into  the  unspoiled  country.  For  though  it 
was  after  ten,  and  the  sky  overcast,  still  one  could 
see  very  clearly  the  glimmering  road  and  the  hedge- 
rows in  the  soft  midsummer  twilight.  Enjoying  this 
tranquillity,  I  passed  by  a  man  and  woman  with  two 


48  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

children,  and  heard  the  man  say  invitingly  :  "  Shall 
I  carry  the  basket  ?"  The  wife  answered  :  "  'E 
en't  'eavy,  Bill,  thanks.  .  .  .  Only  I  got  this  'ere 
little  Rosy  to  git  along." 

Her  voice  sounded  gentle  and  cheerful,  and  I  tried 
to  hear  more,  checking  my  pace.  But  the  children 
were  walking  too  slowly.  I  was  getting  out  of  ear- 
shot, missing  the  drift  of  the  peaceful-sounding 
chatter,  when  presently  the  woman,  as  if  turning  to 
the  other  child,  said  more  loudly  :  "  Come  along. 
Sonny !"  The  man  added  :  "  Hullo,  old  man  ! 
Come  along  !     You'll  be  left  behind  !" 

The  children  began  prattling  ;  their  father  and 
mother  laughed  ;  but  I  was  leaving  them  farther 
and  farther  behind.  Then,  however,  some  other 
homeward-goer  overtook  the  little  family.  For  the 
talk  grew  suddenly  louder,  the  woman  beginning 
cheerily :  "  Hullo,  Mr.  Weatherall !  'Ow's  your 
poor  wife  ?  .  .  .  I  didn't  see  as  'twas  you,  'till  this 
here  little  Rosy  said  ..." 

What  Rosy  had  said  I  failed  to  catch.  I  missed 
also  what  followed,  leading  up  to  the  woman's 
endearing  remark  :  "  This  'ere  little  Rosy,  she's  a 
reg'lar  gal  for  cherries  !"  The  neighbour  seemed  to 
say  something  ;  then  the  husband  ;  then  the  neigh- 
bour again.  And  at  that  there  came  a  burst  of 
laughter,  loudest  from  the  woman,  and  Mr.  Weatherall 
asked  :  "  Didn't  you  never  hear  that  afore  ?" 

The  woman,  laughing  still,  was  emphatic  :  "  No  ; 
I'll  take  my  oath  as  I  never  knowed  that." 


MAN  AND  WIFE  49 

"  Well,  you  knows  it  now,  don't  ye  ?" 
"  I  ain't  sure  yet.  I  ain't  had  time  to  consider." 
After  that  the  subject  changed.  I  heard  the 
woman  say  :  "  I've  had  six  gals  an'  only  one  boy — 
one  out  o'  seven.  Alice  is  out  courtin'  "  ;  and  then 
they  seemed  to  get  on  to  the  question  of  ways  and 
means.     The    last    words    that    reached   me   were 

"  Fivepence tuppence-ha'penny  ;"  but  still,  when 

I  could  no  longer  catch  any  details  at  all,  the  voices 
continued  to  sound  pleasantly  good-tempered. 


IV 

MANIFOLD  TROUBLES 

Besides  the  unrelieved  hardness  of  daily  life — the 
need,  which  never  lifts  from  them,  of  making  shift 
and  doing  all  things  for  themselves — there  has  always 
been  another  influence  at  work  upon  my  neighbours, 
leaving  its  indelible  mark  on  them.  Almost  from 
infancy  onwards,  in  a  most  personal  and  intimate 
way,  they  are  familiar  with  harrowing  experiences 
of  calamity  such  as  people  who  employ  them  are 
largely  able  to  escape.  The  little  children  are  not 
exempt.  There  being  no  nursemaids  to  take  care 
of  the  children  while  fathers  and  mothers  are  busy, 
the  tiniest  are  often  entrusted  to  the  perilous  charge 
of  others  not  quite  so  tiny,  and  occasionally  they 
come  to  grief.  Then  too  often  the  older  children, 
who  are  themselves  more  secure  for  a  few  years,  are 
eyewitnesses  of  occurrences  such  as  more  fortunate 
boys  and  girls  are  hardly  allowed  even  to  hear  of. 
Nor  is  it  only  with  the  gory  or  horrible  disaster  that 
the  people  thus  become  too  early  acquainted.  The 
nauseating  details  of  sickness  are  better  known  and 
more  openly  discussed  in  the  cottage  than  in  com- 
fortable middle-class  homes.     For  it  is  all  such  a 

50 


MANIFOLD  TROUBLES  51 

crowded  business — that  of  living  in  these  cramped 
dwellings.  Besides,  the  injured  and  the  sick,  ab- 
sorbed in  the  interest  of  their  ailments,  are  amiably 
willing  to  give  others  an  opportunity  of  sharing  it. 
The  disorder  or  the  disablement  is  thus  almost  a 
family  possession.  An  elderly  man,  who  had  offered 
to  show  me  a  terrible  ulcer  on  his  leg,  smiled  at  my 
squeamishness,  as  if  he  pitied  me,  when  I  declined 
the  privilege.  "  Why,  the  little  un,"  he  said,  point- 
ing to  a  four-year-old  girl  on  the  floor,  "  the  little  un 
rolls  the  bandage  for  me  every  evening,  because  I 
dresses'n  here  before  the  fire."  That  is  the  way  in  the 
labourer's  cottage.  Even  where  privacy  is  attempted 
for  the  sufferer's  sake  there  is  no  refuge  for  the  family 
from  the  evidence  of  suffering.  The  young  people 
in  one  room  may  hardly  avoid  knowing  and  hearing 
where  a  man  is  dying,  or  a  woman  giving  birth  to  a 
child,  just  the  other  side  of  a  latched  deal  door. 

In  this  connection  it  should  be  remembered  how 
much  more  than  their  share  of  the  afflictions  of  the 
community  falls  to  the  labouring  people.  The 
men's  work  naturally  takes  them  where  accidents 
happen,  where  disease  is  contracted.  And  then, 
from  ignorance  or  the  want  of  conveniences,  from 
the  need  to  continue  wage-earning  as  long  as  endur- 
ance will  hold  out,  and  also  from  the  sheer  careless- 
ness which  is  a  part  of  their  necessary  habit,  both  the 
men  and  the  women  not  seldom  allow  themselves  to 
fall  into  sickness  which  a  little  self-indulgence,  if 
only  they  dared  yield  to  it,  would  enable  them  to 


52  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

avoid.  I  should  not  know  how  to  begin  counting 
the  numbers  I  have  personally  known  enfeebled  for 
life  in  this  way.  Things  are  better  now  than  they 
were  twenty  years  ago  ;  there  are  many  more  oppor- 
tunities than  there  used  to  be  of  obtaining  rest  or 
nursing,  but  stiU  the  evil  is  widespread.  Without 
going  out  of  my  way  at  aU,  during  the  last  fortnight 
I  have  heard  of — have  almost  stumbled  across — 
three  cases  of  the  sort.  The  first  was  that  of  a 
woman  who  had  been  taking  in  washing  during  her 
husband's  long  illness.  Meeting  the  man,  who  was 
beginning  to  creep  about  again,  I  happened  to  ask 
how  his  wife  was  ;  and  he  said  that  she  was  just  able 
to  keep  going,  but  hardly  knew  how  to  stand  because 
of  varicose  veins  in  both  legs.  The  second  case,  too, 
was  a  woman's.  She  met  me  on  the  road,  and  on 
the  off  chance  asked  if  I  could  give  her  a  letter  of 
admission  to  the  County  Hospital,  and  so  save  her 
the  pain  of  going  down  to  the  Vicarage  to  beg  for  a 
letter  there.  What  was  the  matter  ?  "I  give  birth 
to  twins  five  months  ago,"  she  said,  "  and  since 
then  dropsy  have  set  in.  I  gets  heavier  every  day. 
The  doctor  wants  me  to  go  to  the  hospital,  and  I 
was  goin'  to  the  Vicar  to  ask  for  a  letter,  but  I  dreads 
comin'  back  up  that  hill."  As  it  was  she  had  already 
walked  half  a  mile.  In  the  third  case  a  man's 
indifference  to  his  own  suffering  was  to  blame  for  the 
plight  in  which  he  found  himself.  Driving  a  van, 
he  had  barked  his  shin  against  the  iron  step  on  the 
front  of  the  van.     Just  as  the  skin  had  begun  to 


MANIFOLD  TROUBLES  53 

heal  over  he  knocked  it  again,  severely,  in  exactly 
the  same  way,  and  he  described  to  me  the  immense 
size  of  the  aggravated  wound.  But,  as  he  said,  he 
had  supposed  it  would  get  well,  and,  beyond  tying 
his  leg  up  with  a  rag,  he  took  no  further  trouble 
about  it,  until  it  grew  so  bad  that  he  was  obliged  to 
see  a  doctor.  His  account  of  the  interview  went 
in  this  way  :  "  *  How  long  since  you  done  this  ?'  the 
doctor  says.  '  A  month,'  I  says.  '  Then  you  must 
be  a  damn  fool  not  to  'ave  come  to  me  afore,* 
the  doctor  says."  The  man,  indeed,  looked  just 
as  likely  as  not  to  be  laid  up  for  six  months,  if 
not  permanently  crippled,  as  a  result  of  his  care- 
lessness. 

Yet,  common  as  such  cases  are  now,  they  were 
commoner  when  I  first  knew  the  village — when  there 
was  no  cottage  hospital,  no  proper  accommodation 
at  the  workhouse  infirmary,  no  parish  nurse,  and 
when  the  parish  contained  few  people  of  means  to 
help  those  who  were  in  distress.  I  remember  once 
looking  round  in  that  early  period,  and  noting  how 
there  was  hardly  a  cottage  to  be  seen  which  had  not, 
to  my  own  knowledge,  been  recently  visited  by 
trouble  of  some  sort  or  another.  True,  the  troubles 
were  not  all  of  them  of  a  kind  that  could  be  avoided 
by  any  precaution,  for  some  of  them  arose  from  the 
death  of  old  people.  Yet  in  a  little  cottage  held  on 
a  weekly  tenancy  death  often  involves  the  survivors 
of  the  family  in  more  disturbance,  more  privation 
too,  than  it  does  elsewhere.     Putting  these  cases 


54  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

aside,  however,  I  could  still  see  where,  within  two 
hundred  yards  of  me,  there  had  been  four  other 
deaths — one  being  that  of  an  infant,  and  one  that  of 
a  woman  in  child-birth.  In  the  other  two  cases  the 
victims  were  strong  men — one,  a  railway  worker, 
who  was  killed  on  the  line  ;  the  other  a  carter,  who 
died  of  injuries  received  in  an  accident  with  his 
horse.  The  list  of  lesser  misfortunes  included  the 
iUness  of  a  man  who  broke  down  while  at  work,  with 
hcemorrhage  of  the  stomach,  and  the  bad  case  of  a 
bricklayer's  labourer,  who  lay  for  days  raving  from 
the  effects  of  a  sunstroke.  In  pre-Christian  times  it 
might  have  been  argued  that  the  gods  were  offended 
with  the  people,  so  thickly  did  disasters  fall  upon 
them,  but  my  neighbours  seemed  unaware  of  any- 
thing abnormal  in  the  circumstances.  By  lifelong 
experience  they  had  learned  to  take  calamity  almost 
as  a  matter  of  course. 

For,  as  I  said,  the  experience  begins  early.  The 
children,  the  young  girls,  have  their  share  of  it. 
During  those  earlier  years  I  am  recalling,  a  little  girl 
of  the  village,  who  was  just  beginning  domestic 
service  in  my  household,  was,  within  the  space  of  six 
months,  personally  concerned  in  two  accidents  to 
little  children.  She  came  from  one  of  half-a-dozen 
families  whose  cottages,  for  a  wonder  in  this  village, 
stood  in  a  row  ;  and  amongst  scraps  of  her  talk  which 
were  repeated  to  me  I  heard  how  her  little  brother — 
only  five  years  old,  but  strong  at  throwing  stones — 
threw  at  a  girl  playmate  and  knocked  out  one  of 


MANIFOLD  TROUBLES  55 

her  eyes.  That  happened  in  the  sprmgtime.  In 
the  autumn  of  the  same  year  a  mishap,  if  possible 
more  shocking  at  the  moment,  befell  another  child 
in  that  row  of  cottages.  A  man  there  one  evening 
was  trimming  a  low  hedge.  His  tool  was  a  fag-hook — 
well  sharpened,  for  he  was  one  of  the  ablest  men  in 
the  village.  And  near  by  where  he  worked  his 
children  were  at  play,  the  youngest  of  them  being 
between  three  and  four  years  old. 

As  he  reached  over  the  hedge,  to  chop  downwards 
at  the  farther  side,  this  little  one  suddenly  came 
running  dangerously  near.  "  Take  care,  ducky  !" 
he  cried.  "  Don't  come  so  close,  'r  else  perhaps 
father  '11  cut  ye." 

He  gave  three  more  strokes,  and  again  the  child 
ran  in.  The  hook  fell,  right  across  the  neck.  I  had 
these  particulars  from  a  neighbour.  "  If  't  had  bin 
another  half  inch  round,  the  doctor  said,  'twould 
have  bin  instant  death.  .  .  .  The  man  was  covered 
with  blood,  and  all  the  ground,  too.  I  was  at  work 
when  I  beared  of  it,  but  I  couldn't  go  on  after  that, 
it  upset  me  so.  .  .  .  And  all  this  mornin'  I  can't 
get  it  out  o'  my  mind.  There's  a  shiver  all  up  that 
row.  They  be  all  talkin'  of  it.  The  poor  little 
thing  en't  dead  this  mornin',  and  that's  all's  you 
can  say.  They  bin  up  all  night.  Ne'er  a  one  of 
'em  didn't  go  to  bed." 

So  far  the  neighbour.  Later  the  little  maid- 
servant, who  had  gone  home  that  evening,  told  me  : 
"  We  was  passin'  by  at  the  time — me  and  my  older 


56  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

sister.  .  .  .     She  run  in  and  wrapped  a  towel  round 
its  neck." 

"  Where,  then,  was  the  mother  ?" 

"  She  was  with  its  father.  He'd  fainted.  So  we 
went  in.  We  thought  p'raps  we  could  run  for  the 
doctor.  But  she  went  herself,  jest  as  she  was," 
carrying  the  child  down  to  the  town. 

As  for  the  girl's  sister,  who  had  behaved  with 
some  aplomb,  "  It  made  her  feel  rather  bad  after- 
wards. She  felt  sick.  All  the  floor  was  covered 
with  blood."  The  little  maidservant  had  a  curious 
look,  half  horror,  half  importance,  as  she  said  this. 
She  herself  was  not  more  than  fifteen  at  the  time. 

But  sickness  is  commoner  by  far  than  accident, 
and  owing  to  the  necessity  the  cottagers  are  under 
of  doing  everything  for  themselves  they  often  get 
into  dire  straits.  Of  some  of  the  things  that  go  on 
one  cannot  hear  with  equanimity.  The  people  are 
English  ;  bone  of  our  bone.  But  we  shut  our  eyes. 
I  have  heard  of  well-to-do  folk  in  the  parish  who, 
giving  of  their  abundance  to  foreign  missions,  deny 
that  there  is  distress  here  at  home.  The  most 
charitable  explanation  of  that  falsehood  is  to  sup- 
pose that  across  their  secluded  gardens  and  into 
their  luxurious  rooms,  or  even  to  their  back-doors, 
an  average  English  cottager  is  too  proud  to  go.  Yet 
it  is  hard  to  understand  how  all  signs  of  what  is  so 
constantly  happening  can  be  shut  out.  For  myself, 
I  have  never  gone  out  of  my  way  to  look  for  what 
I  see.     I  have  never  invited  confidences.    The  facts 


MANIFOLD  TROUBLES  57 

that  come  to  my  knowledge  seem  to  be  merely  the 
commonplaces  of  the  village  life.  If  examples  of 
the  people's  troubles  were  wanted,  they  could  be 
provided  almost  endlessly,  and  in  almost  endless 
diversity.  But  there  is  one  feature  that  never 
varies.  Year  after  year  it  is  still  the  same  tale  ;  all 
the  extra  toil,  all  the  discomfort,  or  horror,  or  diffi- 
culty, of  dealing  with  sickness  falls  immediately  on 
the  persons  of  the  family  where  the  sickness  occurs  ; 
and  it  sets  its  cruel  mark  upon  them,  so  that  the 
signs  can  be  seen  as  one  goes  about,  in  the  faces  of 
people  one  does  not  know.  And  the  women  suffer 
most. 

One  winter  evening  a  woman  came  to  my  door  to 
see  if  she  could  borrow  a  bed-rest.  Her  sister,  she 
said,  had  been  ill  with  pleurisy  and  bronchitis  for  a 
week  or  more,  and  for  the  last  two  days  had  been 
spitting  a  great  deal  of  blood.  The  woman  looked 
very  poor  ;  she  might  have  been  judged  needlessly 
shabby.  A  needle  and  thread  would  so  soon  have 
remedied  sundry  defects  in  her  jacket,  which  was 
gaping  open  at  the  seams.  But  her  face  suggested 
that  there  were  excuses  for  her. 

I  have  never  forgotten  her  face,  as  it  showed  that 
evening,  although  I  have  since  seen  it  looking 
happier.  It  was  dull  of  colour — the  face  of  an  over- 
worked and  over-burdened  soul ;  and  it  had  a  sullen 
expression  of  helplessness  and  resentment.  The  eyes 
were  weary  and  pale — I  fancied  that  trouble  had 
faded  the  colour  out  of  them.     But  with  all  this  I 


58  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

got  an  impression  of  something  dogged  and  unbeaten 
in  the  woman's  temper.  She  went  away  with  the 
bed-rest,  apologizing  for  coming  to  borrow  it.  "  'Tis 
so  bad  " — those  were  her  words — "  'tis  so  bad  to 
see  'em  layin'  there  like  that,  sufferin'  so  much 
pain." 

I  had  never  seen  her  before — for  it  was  years  ago  ; 
and,  knowing  no  better  then,  I  supposed  her  to  be 
between  forty  and  fifty  years  old.  In  reality,  she 
can  hardly  have  been  thirty.  It  was  the  stress  of 
personal  service  that  had  marred  her  so  young. 
Did  her  jacket  need  mending  ?  As  I  have  since 
learnt,  at  that  period  the  youngest  of  her  family  was 
unborn,  and  the  oldest  cannot  have  been  more  than 
eight  or  nine.  Besides  nursing  her  sister,  therefore, 
she  had  several  childen  to  wait  upon,  as  well  as  her 
husband — a  man  often  ailing  in  health.  For  all  I 
know  she  was  even  then,  as  certainly  she  has  been 
since,  obliged  to  go  out  working  for  money,  so  as  to 
keep  the  family  going  ;  and,  seeing  that  she  was  a 
mother,  it  is  probable  that  she  herself  had  already 
known  the  extremity  of  hardship. 

Because,  as  scarcely  needs  saying,  the  principle  of 
self-help  is  strained  to  the  uttermost  at  time  of 
child-birth.  Then,  the  other  members  of  the  family 
have  to  shift  for  themselves  as  best  they  can,  with 
what  little  aid  neighbours  can  find  time  to  give  ; 
and  where  there  are  young  children  in  the  cottage, 
it  is  much  if  they  are  sufficiently  fed  and  washed. 
But  it  is  the  situation  of  the  mother  herself  that 


MANIFOLD  TROUBLES  59 

most  needs  to  be  considered.     Let  nie  give  an  illus- 
tration of  how  she  fares. 

Several  years  ago  there  was  a  birth  in  a  cottage 
very  near  to  me.  Only  a  few  hours  before  it  hap- 
pened the  woman  had  walked  into  the  town  to  do 
her  shopping  for  herself  and  carry  home  her  pur- 
chases. As  soon  as  the  birth  was  known,  a  younger 
sister,  out  at  service,  got  a  week's  holiday,  so  that 
she  might  be  at  hand  to  help,  though  there  was  no 
spare  room  in  the  cottage  where  she  could  sleep. 
During  that  week,  also,  the  parish  nurse  came  in 
daily,  until  more  urgent  cases  occupied  all  her  time. 
After  that  the  young  mother  was  left  to  her  own 
resources.  According  to  someone  I  know,  who 
looked  in  from  time  to  time,  she  lay  in  bed  with  her 
new-born  baby,  utterly  alone  in  the  cottage,  her 
husband  being  away  at  work  all  day  for  twelve 
hours,  while  the  elder  children  were  at  school.  She 
made  no  complaint,  however,  of  being  lonely  ;  she 
thought  the  solitude  good  for  her.  But  she  was 
worried  by  thinking  of  the  fire  in  the  next  room — 
the  living-room,  which  had  the  only  fireplace  in  the 
house,  there  being  none  in  her  bedroom — lest  it 
should  set  fire  to  the  cottage  while  she  lay  helpless. 
It  seems  that  the  hearth  was  so  narrow  and  the 
grate  so  high  that  coals  were  a  little  apt  to  fall  out 
on  to  the  floor.  Once,  she  said,  there  had  almost 
been  "  a  fiare-up."  It  was  when  she  was  still 
getting  about,  and  she  had  gone  no  farther  away 
than  into  her  garden  to  feed  the  fowls  ;  but  in  that 


6o  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

interval  a  coal  fell  beyond  the  fender,  and  she, 
returning,  found  the  place  full  of  smoke  and  the 
old  hearthrug  afire.  The  dread  that  this  might 
happen  again  distressed  her  now  as  she  lay  alone, 
unable  to  move. 

I  could  furnish  more  pitiful  tales  than  this,  if  need 
were — tales  of  women  in  child-bed  tormented  with 
anxiety  because  their  husbands  are  out  of  work,  and 
there  is  no  money  in  the  cottage,  and  no  prospect 
of  any  ;  or  harassed  by  the  distress  of  little  children 
who  miss  the  help  which  the  mother  cannot  give, 
and  so  on.  But  this  case  illustrates  the  normal 
situation.  Here  there  was  no  actual  destitution, 
nor  any  fear  of  it,  and  the  other  children  were  being 
cared  for.  The  husband  was  earning  a  pound  a 
week  at  constant  work,  and  the  circumstances  of 
the  family  were  on  the  whole  quite  prosperous. 
But  one  of  the  conditions  of  prosperity  was  that  the 
father  of  the  family  should  be  away  all  day,  leaving 
the  mother  and  infant  unattended. 

From  whatever  sickness  the  woman  suffers,  there 
is  always  the  same  piteous  story  to  be  told — she  is 
destitute  of  help.  The  household  drudge  herself, 
she  has  no  drudges  to  wait  upon  her.  The  other 
day  I  was  told  of  a  woman  suffering  from  pleurisy. 
Her  husband  had  left  home  at  six  o'clock  for  his 
work  ;  a  neighbour-woman  came  in  to  put  on  a 
poultice  and  make  things  comfortable  ;  then  she, 
too,  had  to  go  to  her  work.  In  the  afternoon  a 
visitor,  looking  in  by  chance,  found  that  the  sick 


MANIFOLD  TROUBLES  6i 

woman  had  been  alone  for  five  hours  ;  she  was 
parched  with  thirst,  and  her  poultice  had  gone  cold. 
For  yet  one  more  example.  I  mentioned  just  now 
a  man  who  was  killed  on  the  railway.  His  widow, 
quite  a  young  woman  then,  reared  her  three  or  four 
children,  earning  some  eight  or  nine  shillings  a  week 
at  charing  or  washing  for  people  in  the  town  ;  and 
still  she  keeps  herself,  pluckily  industrious.  There 
is  one  son  living  with  her — an  errand-boy — and  there 
are  two  daughters  both  in  service  at  a  large  new 
house  in  the  village.  During  last  spring  the  woman 
had  influenza,  and  had  to  take  to  her  bed,  her  girls 
being  permitted  to  take  turns  in  coming  home  to 
care  for  her.  Just  as  she,  fortunately,  began  to 
recover,  this  permission  was  withdrawn  :  both  girls 
were  wanted  in  "  their  place,"  because  a  young  lady 
there  had  taken  influenza.  So  they  had  to  forsake 
their  mother.  But  by-and-by  one  of  these  girls  took 
the  infection.  Her  "  place,"  then,  was  thought  to 
be — at  home.  She  was  sent  back  promptly  to  her 
mother,  and  it  was  not  long  before  the  mother  her- 
self broke  down  again,  not  being  yet  strong  enough 
to  do  sick-nursing  in  addition  to  her  daily  work. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  these  acute  and 
definite  troubles  spring  up  from  the  surface  of  an 
ill-defined  but  chronic  anxiety,  from  which  very  few 
of  the  cottagers  are  free  for  any  length  of  time.  For 
though  there  is  not  much  extreme  destitution,  a 
large  number  of  the  villagers  live  always  on  the 


62  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

brink  of  it  ;  they  have  the  fear  of  it  always  in  sight. 
In  a  later  chapter  I  shall  give  some  particulars  as 
to  their  ways  and  means  ;  in  this,  I  only  wish  it  to 
be  remembered  that  the  question  of  ways  and  means 
is  a  life-and-death  one  for  the  labourer  and  his  wife, 
and  leaves  them  little  peace  and  little  hope  of  it. 
During  the  trade  depression  which  culminated  in 
1908-09  I  was  frequently  made  aware  of  the  disquiet 
of  their  minds  by  the  scraps  of  talk  which  reached 
me  as  I  passed  along  the  road,  and  were  not  meant 
for  my  hearing.  From  women  who  were  comparing 
notes  with  one  another,  this  was  the  sort  of  thing 
one  would  hear  :  "  'En't  had  nothin'  to  do  this  six 
weeks;  and  don't  sim  no  likelihoods  of  it."  "I 
s'pose  we  shall  get  through,  somehow."  "  I'm  sure 
I  dunno  what  'tis  a-comin'  to,"  "  'Tis  bad  'nough 
now,  in  the  summer  ;  what  it'll  be  like  in  the  winter, 
Gawd  only  knows."  Again  and  again  I  heard  talk 
like  this. 

And  all  this  was  only  an  accentuation  or  a  slight 
increase  in  volume  of  a  note  of  apprehension  which 
in  better  times  still  runs  less  audibly  as  a  kind  of 
undertone  to  the  people's  thought.  I  had  stopped 
one  day  to  say  good-morning  to  an  old  widow-woman 
outside  her  cottage.  She  was  the  mother  of  that 
young  man  whose  funeral  was  mentioned  two  chap- 
ters back  ;  but  this  was  before  his  death,  and  while, 
in  fact,  he  was  still  doing  a  little  occasional  work. 
She  spoke  cheerfully,  smiled  even,  until  some  chance 
word  of  mine  (I  have  forgotten  what  it  was)  went 


MANIFOLD  TROUBLES  63 

through  the  armour  of  her  fortitude,  and  she  began 
to  cry.  Then  she  told  me  of  the  position  she  was 
in,  and  the  hopelessness  of  it,  and  her  determination 
to  hold  out.  Some  charitable  lady  had  called  upon 
her.  "  Mrs.  Curtis,"  the  lady  had  said,  "  if  ever 
you  are  ill,  I  hope  you'll  be  sure  and  send  to  me." 
And  Mrs.  Curtis  had  replied  :  "  Well,  ma'am,  if  ever 
I  sends,  you  may  be  sure  I  am  ill."  "  But,"  she 
added,  "  they  don't  understand.  'Tis  when  you're 
on  yer  feet  that  help's  wanted — not  wait  till  'tis 
too  late."  With  regard  to  her  present  circum- 
stances— she  "  didn't  mind  saying  it  to  me — some- 
times she  didn't  hardly  know  how  they  was  goin' 
on,"  for  she  hadn't  a  penny  except  what  her  son 
could  earn.  And  "  people  seemed  to  think  it  didn't 
matter  for  a  single  chap  to  be  out  o'  work.  They 
didn't  think  he  might  have  a  mother  to  keep,  or,  if 
he  was  in  lodgin's,  he  couldn't  live  there  for  nothin'. 
.  .  .  Sometimes  we  seems  to  be  gettin'  on  a  little, 
and  then  you  has  bad  luck,  and  there  you  are  again 
where  you  was  before.  It's  like  gettin'  part  way  up 
a  hill  and  fallin'  down  to  the  bottom  again,  and  you 
got  it  all  to  begin  over  again." 

I  said  something — some  platitude — turning  to  go 
away.  Then  she  managed  to  smile — a  shining-eyed 
smile — saying  :  "  Well,  'tis  only  for  life.  If  'twas 
for  longer  than  that  I  don't  know  if  we  should 
hardly  be  able  to  bear  it." 

This  was  but  one  old  woman.  Yet,  if  you  have 
an  ear  for  a  folk-saying,  you  will  recognize  one  there 


64  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

in  that  "  only  for  life  "  of  hers.  Be  sure  that  a  by- 
word so  compact  as  that  was  not  one  old  woman's 
invention.  To  acquire  such  brevity  and  smooth- 
ness, it  must  have  been  wandering  about  the  parish 
for  years  ;  and  when  it  reached  me  at  last  it  had  been 
polished  by  the  despair  of  hundreds  of  other  people, 
as  a  coin  is  polished  by  passing  through  hundreds  of 
hands. 


V 

DRINK 

It  will  be  understood,  from  what  was  said  on  the 
^subject  in  the  first  chapter,  that  the  village  popula- 
tion has  its  rough  element,  and  that  drunkenness, 
or  at  any  rate  excessive  drinking,  is  very  common. 
It  is  true  that  there  are  very  few  habitual  drunkards 
in  the  parish — there  are  not  even  many  men,  per- 
haps, who  frequently  take  too  much  ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  majority  are  beer-drinkers,  and 
every  now  and  then  one  or  another  of  them,  normally 
sober,  oversteps  the  limit.  Thus,  possibly  every 
other  family  has  had  its  passing  experience  of  what 
drunkenness  means  in  the  temporary  lapse  of  father, 
or  son,  or  brother.  A  rainy  Bank  Holiday  invari- 
ably leads  to  much  mischief  in  this  way,  and  so  does 
a  sudden  coming  of  hot  weather  in  the  summer. 
The  men  have  too  much  to  do  to  spare  time  for  the 
public-house  in  the  ordinary  weekdays,  but  on 
Saturday  and  Sunday  nights,  when  the  strain  is 
relaxed,  they  are  apt  to  give  way  too  far. 

The  evils  of  drunkennness,  however,  are  well 
enough  known,  and  I  do  not  propose  to  dwell  on 
that  side  of  the  matter.     But  there  is  another  aspect 

65  5 


66  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

of  it  which  must  be  considered,  if  only  because  it  is 
so  thoroughly  characteristic  of  the  old  village  out- 
look. Incidentally,  this  other  aspect  may  be  worth 
a  little  attention  from  temperance  reformers. 

For  the  truth  is  that  the  average  villager's  atti- 
tude towards  drink  and  temperance  is  not  that  of 
an  unrepentant  or  rebellious  sinner  ;  rather,  it  is  the 
attitude  of  a  man  who  has  sound  reasons  for  ad- 
hering to  his  own  point  of  view.     If  he  grows  restive 
under  the  admonitions  of  the  pharisaical,  if  he  meets 
them  defiantly,  or  if  he  merely  laughs,  as  often  as 
not  it  is  because  he  feels  that  his  mentors  do  not 
understand  the  situation  so  well  as  he  does.     How 
should  they,  who  see  it  wholly  from  the  outside — 
they  who  never  go  near  the  public-house  ;  they  who 
have  no  experience  either  of  poverty  or  of  hard 
work — how  should  they,  who  speak  from  prejudice, 
be  entitled  to  dictate  to  him,  who  has  knowledge  ? 
He  resents  the  interference,  considers  it  insulting, 
and  goes  his  own  way,  supported  by  a  village  opinion 
which  is  entirely  on  his  side,  and  certainly  has  its 
claims  to  respect.     It  is  this  village  opinion  which 
I  wish  to  examine  now. 

In  the  eyes  of  the  older  villagers  or  of  the  more 
old-fashioned  ones  mere  occasional  drunkenness  is  a 
very  venial  fault.  The  people  make  a  distinction 
between  the  habitual  drunkard  and  him  who  occa- 
sionally drinks  too  much,  and  they  are  without  com- 
passion for  the  former.  He  is  a  "  low  blackguard  "; 
they  look  reproachfully  if  you  talk  of  trying  to  help 


DRINK  67 

him  by  giving  him  a  job  of  work,  or  at  any  rate  they 
pity  your  wasted  efforts.  But  for  the  occasional 
defaulter  they  have  a  friendly  feeling,  unless,  of 
course,  he  turns  savage  in  his  cups.  As  long  as  he 
is  cheerful  he  is  rather  a  figure  of  fun  to  them  than 
anything,  or  he  is  an  object  of  wondering  interest. 
On  a  certain  August  Bank  Holiday  I  saw  one  of  our 
villagers  staggering  up  the  hill — a  middle-aged  man, 
far  gone  in  drink,  so  that  all  the  road  was  none  too 
wide  for  him.  Other  wayfarers  accompanied  and 
observed  him  with  a  philosophically  detached  air, 
and  between  whiles  a  woman  grabbed  at  his  coat 
between  the  shoulders,  trying  to  steady  him.  But 
by  and  by,  lurching  free,  he  wobbled  across  the  road 
to  within  an  inch  of  a  perambulator  with  two  chil- 
dren which  another  man  was  pushing.  The  drunken 
man  leant  over  it,  poised  like  an  impending  fate,  and 
so  hung  for  a  few  seconds  before  he  staggered  away, 
and  it  might  be  supposed  that  at  least  the  man 
with  the  perambulator  would  be  indignant.  But 
not  he.  He  merely  remarked  wonderingly  :  "  You 
wouldn't  ha'  thought  it  possible  he  could  ha'  done 
it,  would  ye  ?"  The  other  wayfarers  laughed  lightly, 
amongst  them  a  young  married  woman  with  a 
refined  face. 

While  the  comic  side  of  a  man  in  drink  makes  its 
strong  appeal  to  the  village  folk,  they  are  ready  to 
see  excuses  for  him,  too.  Anybody,  they  argue,  is 
liable  to  be  overtaken  before  he  knows,  and  where 
is  the  great  disgrace  in  an  accident  that  may  befall 


68  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

themselves,  or  me,  or  you  ?  There  is  at  least  no 
superiority  in  their  outlook,  no  pharisaism.  Listen, 
for  proof  of  it,  to  a  talk  of  Bettesworth's  about  a 
neighbour  who  had  been  working  with  the  "  ballast- 
train  "  on  the  railway  all  night.  "  You,"  he  began 
— and  this  first  word  showed  how  innocent  he  was 
of  shame  in  his  own  attitude,  since  he  supposed  that 
I  must  share  his  amusement — "  you'd  ha'  laughed 
if  you'd  ha'  sin  Isaac  yest'day.  He  was  got  fair 
boozed ;  an'  comin'  up  the  gully,  thinkin'  he  was 
goin'  straight  for  'ome,  he  run  his  head  right  into 
they  bushes  down  by  ol'  Dame  Smith's.  Then  he 
got  up  the  slope  about  a  dozen  yards,  an'  begun  to 
go  back'ards  'till  he  come  to  Dame  Smith's  wall, 
and  that  turn'd  'n,  and  he  begun  to  go  back'ards 
again  down  the  gully.  I  did  laugh.  He  bin  at 
work  all  night  on  the  ballast-train,  an'  come  back 
reg'lar  fagged  out,  an'  hadn't  had  no  vittles — an'  a 
feller  wants  something — and  then  the  fust  glass  he 
has  do's  for  'n.  He  bin  workin'  every  night  for  a 
week,  an'  Sundays,  too.  And  Alice  "  ("  Alice  "  is 
Isaac's  wife)  "  is  away  hop-tyin'  all  day,  so,  of 
course,  Isaac  didn't  care  'bout  goin'  'ome  to  lop 
about  there  by  hisself.  ...  I've  seed  a  many  go 
like  that.  They  works  all  night,  an'  gets  reg'lar 
fagged  out,  an'  then  the  fust  drop  does  'em.  When 
Alice  come  'ome,  she  looked  at  least  to  find  the 
kettle  boilin'.  'Stead  o'  that,  she  couldn't  git  in. 
At  least,  she  had  to  fetch  the  key  from  where  she 
put   'n  when  she  went   away  in  the  mornin'.     I 


DRINK  69 

laughed  at  her  when  I  went  down  'ome.  '  Where 
is  he  now  ?'  I  says.  '  Ah,  you  may  laugh,'  she  says, 
'  but  I  got  to  rouse  'n  up  about  ten  o'clock  an'  git 
'n  a  cup  o'  tea.  He  got  to  be  at  work  again  at 
eleven.'  That's  how  they  do's.  Begins  about  ten 
or  eleven  o'clock,  and  don't  leave  off  again  afore 
six  or  seven,  or  p'raps  nine  or  ten,  next  mornin'. 
Makes  days  an'  quarters  for  three  an'  ninepence. 
I've  knowed  a  many  like  that  come  'ome  an'  git 
boozed  fust  glass,  like  old  Isaac.  I  did  laugh, 
though,  and  so  did  Dame  Smith  v/hen  she  was 
a-tellin'  of  me." 

Inheriting  from  their  forefathers  such  an  un- 
imaginative point  of  view,  most  of  the  cottage  folk 
have  been,  until  quite  lately,  far  from  regarding  the 
public-house  as  a  public  nuisance.  It  had  a  dis- 
tinct value  in  their  scheme  of  living.  That  fact 
was  demonstrated  plainly  in  an  outburst  of  popular 
feeling  some  years  ago.  The  licensing  magistrates 
of  the  neighbourhood  had  taken  the  extreme,  and 
at  that  time  unprecedented,  course  of  refusing  to 
renew  the  licenses  of  several  houses  in  the  town. 
But  while  the  example  they  had  thus  set  was 
winning  them  applause  all  up  and  down  England, 
they  were  the  objects,  in  this  and  the  adjacent 
villages,  of  all  sorts  of  vituperation  on  account  of 
what  the  cottagers  considered  a  wanton  insult  to 
their  class.  It  must  be  admitted  that  the  action 
of  the  justices  had  some  appearance  of  being  directed 


70  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

against  the  poor.  Nobody  could  deny,  for  instance, 
that  the  houses  frequented  by  middle-class  clients, 
and  responsible  for  a  good  deal  of  middle-class 
drinking,  were  all  passed  over,  and  that  those  singled 
out  for  extinction  served  only  the  humblest  and 
least  influential.  My  neighbours  entertained  no 
doubts  upon  the  matter.  They  were  not  personally 
concerned — at  any  rate,  the  public-houses  in  this 
village  were  left  open  for  them  to  go  to — but  the 
appearance  of  favouritism  offended  them.  They 
were  as  sure  as  if  it  had  been  officially  proclaimed 
that  the  intention  was  to  impose  respectability  upon 
them  against  their  will  ;  their  pleasures  were  to  be 
curtailed  to  please  fanatics  who  understood  nothing 
and  cared  less  about  the  circumstances  of  cottage 
folk.  So,  during  some  weeks  the  angry  talk  went 
round  the  village  ;  it  was  not  difficult  to  know  what 
the  people  were  thinking.  They  picked  to  pieces 
the  character  of  the  individual  magistrates,  planning 
ineffective  revenge.  "  That  old  So-and-So  "  (Chair- 
man of  the  Urban  Council) — "  they'd  bin  to  his  shop 
all  their  lives,  but  he'd  find  he'd  took  his  last  shillin' 
from  'em  now  !  And  that  What's-his-Name — the 
workin'  classes  had  voted  for  'n  at  last  County 
Council  election,  and  this  was  how  he  served  'em  ! 
He  needn't  trouble  to  put  up  again,  when  his  turn 
was  up  !"     Then  they  commiserated  the  suffering 

publicans.     "  Look   at   poor   old   Mrs.   ,   what 

kept  the  house  down  Which  Street — always  a  most 
well-conducted   house.     Nobody    couldn't    find   no 


DRINK  71 

fault  with  it.  and  'twas  her  livin'  !  Why  should  she 
have  her  livin'  took  away  like  that,  poor  old  gal  ? 
.  .  .  They  sims  to  think  nobody  en't  right  'xcep' 
jest  theirselves — as  if  we  poor  people  could  live  an' 
go  on  same  as  they  do.  They  can  'ave  their  drink 
at  'ome,  and  their  music,  but  where  be  we  to  go  to 
if  they  shuts  up  the  'ouses  ?"  Such  were  the 
remarks  I  heard  over  and  over  again.  It  seemed  to 
the  poor  that  there  were  to  be  no  more  cakes  and  ale, 
because  Malvolio  was  virtuous,  or  because  their  own 
manners  were  not  refined  enough. 

In  the  light  of  subsequent  political  events  I  am 
prepared  to  believe  that  some  of  this  popular  indig- 
nation was  engineered  from  the  public-houses.  But 
I  do  not  think  it  required  much  engineering.  It 
sounded  spontaneous  at  the  time,  and  considering 
how  the  villagers  are  placed,  their  resentment  was 
not  unnatural.  As  I  have  said,  the  public-house 
has  its  value  in  their  scheme  of  living.  They  have 
no  means  of  enjoying  themselves  at  home,  no  room 
in  their  cottages  for  entertaining  friends,  and  they 
may  well  ask  what  they  are  to  do  if  the  public- 
houses  are  closed  to  them. 

One  thing,  at  least,  is  sure.  If  the  ordinary 
village  inn  were  nothing  but  the  foul  drink-shop 
which  its  enemies  allege,  if  all  that  it  provided  was 
an  irresistible  temptation  to  depravity,  the  majority 
of  the  people  who  resort  to  it  now  would  very  soon 
leave  it  alone.  And  the  same  is  true  of  the  little 
lowly  places  in  the  town.     In  the  third  chapter  I 


72  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

mentioned  how  the  village  women,  with  their  men- 
folk and  their  children,  too — until  the  recent  Act  of 
Parliament  shut  the  children  out — would  make  a 
Saturday-night    call    at    some   public-house   before 
going  home  from  the  weekly  shopping  expedition. 
But  these  are  the  reverse  of  bad  women.     They  are 
honest    and    self-respecting    mothers    of    families ; 
women  obviously  innocent  of  anything  approaching 
intemperance.     I  have  seen  them  chatting  outside 
a  public-house  door,  and  then  smilingly  pushing  it 
open  and  going  in,  as  happily  unconscious  of  evil  as 
if  they  were  going  to  a  mothers'  meeting.     They  see 
no  harm  in  it.     They  are  away  from  home,  they 
have  far  to  go,  and  they  want  refreshment.     But  it 
is  perfectly  certain  that  most  of  them  would  rather 
drop  than  enter  such  places — for  they  are  not  afraid 
of  fatigue — if  there  were  risk  of  anything  really 
wrong    within.      The    labouring-class    woman,    as 
already  explained,  takes  no  hurt  from  a  frank  style 
of  talk.     She  is  not  squeamish,  but  she  has  a  very 
strong  sense  of  her  own  honour  ;  and  if  you  remem- 
ber how  keen  is  the  village  appetite  for  scandal,  you 
will  perceive  that  there  can  be  no  fear  of  scandal 
attaching  to  her  because  of  a  visit  to  a  public-house, 
or  she  would  not  go  there.     It  should  be  noted,  as 
evidence  of  a  strict  public  opinion  regulating  the 
custom,  that  these  same  women  seldom  enter  the 
public-houses  in  the  village,  and  never  any  others 
save  on  this  one  occasion.     They  require  the  justifi- 
cation of  their  weekly  outing,  when  supper  is  de- 


DRINK  73 

layed,  and  the  burden  of  living  can  be  forgotten 
amongst  friends  for  an  hour.  At  other  times  they 
would  consider  the  indulgence  disgraceful ;  and 
though  they  enjoy  it  just  at  these  times,  I  do  not 
remember  that  I  have  ever  seen  one  of  them  show- 
ing the  least  sign  of  having  carried  her  enjoyment 
too  far. 

The  men  certainly  are  governed  by  no  such  severe 
public  opinion,  but  are  free  to  "  get  a  drink  "    at 
any  time  without  being  thought  the  worse  of  by 
their  neighbours  ;  yet  they,  too,  for  the  most  part, 
are  of  good  and  sober  character  enough  to  prove 
that  the  village  public-house  cannot  be  so  utterly 
given  up  to  evil  as  might    be  supposed  from  the 
horrified  talk  of  refined  people.     Not  many  men  in 
this  parish  would  tolerate  a  place  in  which  they 
could  do  nothing  but  get  drunk.     It  is  for  some- 
thing else  that  they  go  to  the   Fox  or  the  Happy 
Home.     The  drinking  is  but   a   pleasant  incident. 
They  despise  the  fellow  who  merely  goes  in  to  have 
his  unsociable  glass  and  be  off  again,  as  heartily  as 
they  dislike  the  habitual  soaker  who  brings  their 
entertainment  into  disfavour ;  and  they  themselves 
keep  a  rough  sort  of  order — or  they  increase  dis- 
order in  trying  to  quell  it — rather  than  that  the 
landlord   should   interfere.     That   loud   harsh   talk 
which  one  hears  as  one  passes  the  public-house  of 
an  evening  is  not  what  the  hyper-sensitive  suppose. 
It  does  not  betoken  drunkenness  so   much  as  un- 
couth manners — the  manners  of  neglected  men  who 


74  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

spend  their  lives  at  severe  physical  labour,  and  want 
a  little  relaxation  in  the  evening.  So  far  as  I  have 
seen,  the  usual  conversation  in  the  taproom  of  a 
country  public-house  is  a  lazy  and  innocent  inter- 
change of  remarks,  which  wander  aimlessly  from 
one  subject  to  another,  because  nobody  wants  to 
bother  his  head  with  thinking  ;  or  else  it  is  a  vehe- 
ment discussion,  in  which  dogmatic  assertion  does 
duty  for  argument  and  loudness  for  force.  In 
either  case  it  rests  and  stimulates  the  tired  men, 
while  the  drink  refreshes  their  throats,  and  it  has 
no  more  necessary  impropriety  than  the  drawing- 
room  talk  of  the  well-to-do.  In  this  intercourse 
men  who  do  not  read  the  papers  get  an  inkling  of 
the  news  of  the  day,  those  who  have  no  books  come 
into  contact  with  other  minds,  opinions  are  aired, 
the  human  craving  for  fun  gets  a  little  exercise  ;  and 
for  topics  of  talk,  instead  of  those  which  occupy 
moneyed  people,  who  know  about  the  theatre  or 
the  Church,  or  foreign  travel,  or  golf,  or  the  state 
of  the  poor,  or  the  depreciation  of  Consols,  the 
labourers  have  their  gardens,  and  the  harvest,  and 
the  horses  they  drive.  They  talk  about  their  em- 
ployers, and  their  work,  and  their  wages  ;  they  dis- 
pute about  county  cricket  or  exchange  notes  about 
blight,  or  new  buildings,  or  the  latest  public  sensa- 
tion ;  and  all  this  in  endless  detail,  endlessly  inter- 
esting to  them.  So,  utterly  unaided  by  arts  or  any 
contrivances  for  amusement,  they  make  entertain- 
ment for  themselves.     That  they  must  make  it  in 


DRINK  75 

kindly  temper,  too,  is  obvious  ;  for  v/ho  would  take 
part  in  it  to  be  usually  annoyed  ?  And  it  may  well 
be  conceived  that  in  an  existence  so  empty  of  other 
pleasures,  the  pleasures  to  be  derived  from  company 
are  held  precious.  The  scheme  of  living  would  be 
very  desolate  without  that  consolation,  would  grow 
very  illiberal  and  sombre.  But  the  public-houses  at 
least  do  something  to  prevent  this,  and  in  clinging 
to  them  the  villagers  have  clung  to  something  which 
they  need  and  cannot  get  elsewhere.  It  is  idle  to 
pretend  that  the  "  Institute  "  which  was  started  a 
few  years  ago  provides  a  satisfactory  alternative. 
Controlled  by  people  of  another  class,  whose  "  re- 
spectability "  is  irksome,  aiid  open  only  to  members 
and  never  to  women,  the  Institute  does  not  lend 
itself  to  the  easy  intercourse  which  tired  men  enjoy 
at  the  public-house.  Its  billiard-table  is  not  for 
their  heavy  hands,  used  to  the  pick-axe  and  shovel ; 
its  card  games  interrupt  their  talk  ;  its  newspapers 
remind  them  that  they  cannot  read  very  well,  and 
suggest  a  mode  of  life  which  they  are  unable  to 
share. 

These  reasons,  I  believe,  prevail  to  keep  the 
labouring  men  from  patronizing  the  Institute  more 
even  than  does  its  strictly  teetotal  policy.  Or 
perhaps  I  should  say,  rather,  that  while  they  dislike 
going  without  their  beer,  they  object  more  strongly 
still  to  the  principle  on  which  it  is  forbidden  in  the 
Institute.  For  that  principle  is  nothing  more  or  less 
than  a  tacit  arraignment  of  their  own  point  of  view. 


76  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

It  imputes  evil  propensities  to  them  ;  it  directly 
challenges  the  truth  of  an  idea  which  not  only  have 
they  never  doubted,  but  which  their  own  experi- 
ence seems  to  them  to  confirm.     The  day-labourer 
really  knows  nothing  to  take  the  place  of  beer.     A 
man  who  has  been  shovelling  in  a  gravel-pit,  or 
carrying  bricks  up  a  ladder,  or  hoeing  in  the  fields, 
or  carting  coal,  for  ten  hours  in  the  day,  and  has, 
perhaps,  walked  six  or  seven  miles  to  do  it,  acquires 
a  form  of  thirst  which  no  other  drink  he  can  buy 
will   touch   so   coolly.     Of   alternatives,   milk   fails 
utterly  ;  "  minerals  "  are  worse  than  unsatisfactory  ; 
tea,  to  serve  the  purpose  at  all,  must  be  taken  very 
hot,    and   then   it   produces   uncomfortable   sweat, 
besides  involving  the  expense  of  a  fire  for  its  pre- 
paration.    There    remains    cold    water.     But    cold 
w^ater  in  copious  draughts  has  its  drawbacks,  even 
if  it  can  be  obtained,  and  that  is  assuming  too  much. 
In  this  parish,  at  any  rate,  good  water  was,  until 
quite  lately,  a  scarce  commodity,  and  nobody  cared 
to  drink  the  stagnant  stuff  out  of  the  tanks  or  water- 
butts   which   supplied   most    of   the   cottages.     In 
short,   prudence  itself  has   seemed   to   recommend 
beer  as  the  one  drink  for  tired  men.     In  their  view 
it  is  the  safest,  and  the  most  easily  obtained,  and, 
when   obtained,    it   affords   the   most   refreshment. 
Thus  much  their  own  experience  has  taught  the 
villagers. 

And  they  have  the  tradition  of  long  generations 
to  support  them  in  their  taste.     As  far  back  as  they 


DRINK  77 

can  remember,  the  strongest  and  ablest  men,  whose 
virtues  they  still  recall  and  admire,  renewed  their 
strength  with  beer  daily.  Not  labourers  alone,  but 
farmers  and  other  employers  too,  whose  health  and 
prosperity  were  a  sufficient  justification  of  their 
habits,  were  wont  to  begin  their  morning  with  a 
glass  of  beer,  which  they  took,  not  as  a  stimulant, 
but  as  a  food ;  and  the  belief  in  it  as  a  food  was  so 
convinced  that  a  man  denied  his  beer  by  doctor's 
orders  was  hardly  to  be  persuaded  that  he  was  not 
being  starved  of  due  nourishment.  Such  was  the 
esteem  in  which  beer  was  held  twenty  years  ago, 
nor  has  the  belief  been  uprooted  yet.  Indeed,  an 
opinion  so  sanctioned  to  a  man,  by  the  approval  of 
his  own  father  and  grandfather  and  all  the  worthies 
he  can  remember,  does  not  immediately  become  false 
to  him  just  because  it  is  condemned  by  strangers 
who  do  not  know  him,  and  who,  with  all  their  tem- 
perance, seern  to  him  a  delicate  and  feeble  folk.  He 
prefers  his  own  standard  of  good  and  evil,  and  in 
sitting  down  to  his  glass  he  has  no  doubt  that  he  is 
following  a  sensible  old  fashion,  modestly  trying  to 
be,  not  a  fine  gentleman,  but  a  sturdy  English- 
man. 

On  much  the  same  principle  the  public-house  as 
a  place  of  resort  is  justified  to  the  villager.  I  have 
already  shown  how  it  serves  him  for  entertainment 
instead  of  newspaper,  or  book,  or  theatre  ;  and  here, 
again,  he  has  a  long-standing  country  tradition  to 
support   him.     In   spite   of  reformers   on   the   one 


78  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

hand,  and  on  the  other  hand  that  tendency  of  "  the 
trade,"  which  is  spoiUng  the  public-house  as  a  place 
of  comfortable  rest  by  frowning  upon  customers  who 
stay  too  long  and  drink  too  little — in  spite  of  these 
discouragements,  the  villagers  still  cannot  believe 
that  what  was  good  enough  for  their  fathers  is  not 
good  enough  for  themselves.  It  might  not  be 
equally  good  if  they  wished  to  be  "  superior  persons," 
but  for  the  modest  needs  of  people  like  themselves 
they  think  it  should  serve.  So  they  go  to  the  public- 
house  just  as  their  fathers  did,  content  to  miss  the 
approval  of  the  cultured,  so  long  as  they  can  do  as 
well  as  those  worthies.  Of  course,  if  they  ever 
analyzed  their  impressions,  they  must  often  go  home 
discerning  that  they  had  been  disappointed  ;  that 
the  company  had  been  dull  and  the  comfort  small  ; 
that  they  had  got  less  conviviality  than  they 
wanted,  and  more  of  the  drink  that  should  have 
been  only  its  excuse  ;  but  as  they  are  never  intro- 
spective, so  the  disappointment  goes  unnoticed,  and 
leads  to  no  disillusionment. 


VI 

WAYS  AND  MEANS 

Before  going  farther  I  must  try  to  give  some 
account  of  the  ways  and  means  of  the  villagers, 
although,  obviously,  in  a  population  so  hetero- 
geneous, nothing  short  of  a  scientific  survey  on  the 
lines  pursued  by  Sir  Charles  Booth  or  Mr.  Rowntree 
could  be  of  much  value  in  this  direction.  The 
observations  to  be  offered  here  pretend  to  no  such 
authority.  They  have  been  collected  at  random, 
and  subjected  to  no  tests,  and  they  refer  almost 
exclusively  to  the  "  unskilled  "  labouring  people. 

During  twenty  years  there  have  not  been  many 
fluctuations  in  the  price  of  a  day's  labour  in  the 
parish,  but  probably  on  the  whole  there  has  been  a 
slight  increase.  The  increase,  however,  is  very  un- 
certain. While  the  South  African  War  was  in 
progress,  and  afterwards  when  Bordon  Camp  was 
building,  eight  miles  away,  labour  did  indeed  seem 
to  profit.  But  then  came  the  inevitable  trade  de- 
pression, work  grew  scarce,  and  by  the  summer  of 
1909  wages  had  dropped  to  something  less  than 
they  had  been  before  the  war.  I  heard,  for  instance, 
of  a  man — one  of  the  most  capable  in  the  district — 

79 


8o  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

who  was  glad  that  summer  to  go  haymaking  at 
half  a  crown  a  day.  And  yet  two  or  three  years 
earlier  he  had  certainly  been  earning  from  fourpence 
halfpenny  to  fivepence  an  hour,  or,  say,  from  three 
and  sixpence  to  four  shillings  for  a  day's  work.  In 
1909  the  low-water  mark  was  reached  ;  the  following 
spring  saw  a  slight  revival,  and  at  present  the 
average  may  be  put  at  three  shillings.  For  this 
sum  a  fairly  good  man  can  be  got  to  do  an  ordinary 
day's  work  of  nine  hours  in  the  vegetable-garden  or 
at  any  odd  job. 

The  builders'  labourers  are  rather  better  paid — if 
their  employment  were  not  so  intermittent — with 
an  average  of  from  fourpence  halfpenny  to  fivepence 
an  hour.  Carters,  too,  and  vanmen  employed  by 
coal-merchants,  builders,  and  other  tradesmen  in 
the  town,  are  comparatively  well  off  with  constant 
work  at  eighteen  or  twenty  shillings  a  week.  The 
men  in  the  gravel-pits — but  that  industry  is  rapidly 
declining  as  one  after  another  the  pits  are  worked 
out — can  earn  perhaps  five  shillings  a  day  if  at  piece- 
work, or  about  three  and  sixpence  on  ordinary  terms. 
From  this  sum  a  deduction  must  be  made  for  tools, 
which  the  men  provide  and  keep  in  repair  themselves. 
It  is  rather  a  heavy  item.  The  picks  frequently 
need  repointing,  and  a  blacksmith  can  hardly  do 
this  for  less  than  twopence  the  point.  The  gravel- 
work,  too,  is  very  irregular.  In  snow  or  heavy  rain 
it  has  to  stop,  and  in  frost  it  is  difficult.  More  than 
once  during  the  winter  of  1908-09,  it  being  a  time 


WAYS  AND  MEANS  8i 

of  great  distress,  gravel-pit  workers  came  to  me  with 
some  of  those  worked  flints — the  big  paleoliths  of 
the  river-gravel — which  they  had  found  and  saved 
up,  but  now  desired  to  sell,  in  order  to  raise  money 
for  pointing  their  pickaxes.  I  have  wondered  some- 
times if  the  savages  who  shaped  those  flints  had  ever 
looked  out  upon  life  so  anxiously  as  these  neighbours 
of  mine,  whose  iron  tools  were  so  strangely  receiving 
this  prehistoric  help. 

At  one  time  upwards  of  forty  men  in  the  parish 
had  more  or  less  constant  work  on  one  of  the  "  bal- 
last-trains "  which  the  South- Western  Railway  kept 
on  the  line  for  repairing  the  permanent  way.  The 
work,  usually  done  at  night  and  on  Sundays,  brought 
them  in  from  eighteen  to  twenty-four  shillings  a 
week,  according  to  the  hours  they  made.  I  do  not 
know  how  many  of  our  men  are  employed  on  the 
railway  now,  but  they  are  certainly  fewer.  Some 
years  ago — it  was  when  the  great  trade  depression 
had  already  hit  the  parish  badly,  and  dozens  of  men 
were  out  of  work  here — the  railway-company  sud- 
denly stopped  this  train,  and  consternation  spread 
through  the  village  at  the  prospect  of  forty  more 
being  added  to  the  numbers  of  its  unemployed. 

Reviewing  the  figures,  and  making  allowance  for 
short  time  due  to  bad  weather,  public  holidays,  sick- 
ness, and  so  on,  it  may  be  estimated  that  even  when 
trade  is  good  the  average  weekly  wage  earned  by 
one  of  the  village  men  at  his  recognized  work  is 
something   under   seventeen   shillings.     This,   how- 

6 


82  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

ever,  does  not  constitute  quite  the  whole  income  of 
the  family.  In  most  cases  the  man's  wages  are 
supplemented  by  small  and  uncertain  sums  deiived 
from  the  work  of  women  and  children,  and  from 
odd  jobs  done  in  the  evenings,  and  from  extra 
earnings  in  particular  seasons. 

Field-work  still  employs  a  few  women,  although 
every  year  their  numbers  decrease.  It  is  miserably 
paid  at  a  shilling  a  day,  or  in  some  cases  on  piece- 
work terms  which  hardly  work  out  at  a  higher  figure. 
Piecework,  for  instance,  was  customary  in  the  hop- 
gardens (now  rapidly  disappearing),  where  the 
women  cut  the  bines  and  "  tied  "  or  "  trained  " 
the  hops  at  so  much  per  acre,  providing  their  own 
rushes  for  the  tying.  At  haymaking  and  at  harvest- 
ing there  is  work  for  women ;  and  again  in  the  hop- 
gardens, when  the  picking  is  over,  women  are  useful 
at  clearing  up  the  bines.  They  can  earn  money, 
too,  at  trimming  swedes,  picking  up  newly-dug 
potatoes,  and  so  on  ;  but  when  all  is  said,  there  are 
not  many  of  them  who  can  find  work  to  do  in  the 
fields  all  the  year  round.  At  the  best,  bad  weather 
often  interrupts  them,  and  the  stress  and  hardships 
of  the  work,  not  to  mention  other  drawbacks,  make 
the  small  earnings  from  it  a  doubtful  blessing. 

A  considerable  number  of  women  formerly  eked 
out  the  family  income  by  taking  in  washing  for 
people  in  the  town.  Several  properly  equipped 
laundries  have  of  late  years  greatly  reduced  this 
employment,  but  it  still  occupies  a  few.     The  difh- 


WAYS  AND  MEANS  83 

culties  of  carrying  it  on  are  considerable,  apart  from 
the  discomforts  of  it  in  a  small  cottage.  Unless  a 
woman  has  a  donkey  and  cart,  it  is  hard  for  her  to 
get  the  washing  from  her  customers'  homes  and 
carry  it  back  again.  Of  the  amount  that  can  be 
earned  at  the  work  by  a  married  woman,  with  hus- 
band and  children  to  do  for,  I  have  no  knowledge. 

Charwomen,  more  in  demand  than  ever  as  the 
residential  character  of  the  place  grows  more  pro- 
nounced, earn  latterly  as  much  as  two  shillings  a 
day,  besides  at  least  one  substantial  meal.  The 
meal  is  a  consideration,  and  obviously  good  for  the 
women.  In  bad  times,  when  the  men  and  even  the 
children  go  rather  hungry,  it  often  happens  that  the 
mother  of  the  family  is  able  to  keep  her  strength  up, 
thanks  to  the  tolerable  food  she  gets  three  or  four 
days  a  week  in  the  houses  where  she  goes  scrubbing 
and  cleaning. 

A  few  women — so  few  that  they  really  need  not  be 
mentioned — earn  a  little  at  needlework,  two  or  three 
of  them  having  a  small  dressmaking  connection 
amongst  their  cottage  neighbours  and  with  servant- 
girls.  It  will  be  realized  that  the  prices  which  such 
clients  can  afford  to  pay  are  pitifully  small. 

In  one  or  other  of  these  ways  most  of  the  labour- 
ing class  women  do  something  to  add  to  the  earnings 
of  their  husbands,  so  that  in  prosperous  times  the 
family  income  may  approach  twenty-four  shillings 
a  week.  Yet  the  average  must  be  below  that  sum. 
The  woman's  work  is  very  irregular,  and  just  when 


84  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

her  few  shillings  would  be  most  useful — namely, 
when  she  has  a  baby  or  little  children  to  care  for — 
of  course  her  employment  stops.  If  not,  it  is  un- 
profitable in  the  end  ;  for,  involving  as  it  does  some 
neglect  of  the  children,  as  well  as  of  the  woman's 
own  health,  it  leads  to  sickness  and  expenses  which 
may  impoverish  the  whole  family  for  years. 

With  regard  to  the  minor  sources  of  income,  I 
have  often  wondered  at  the  eagerness  of  the  average 
labourer  to  earn  an  odd  shilling,  and  at  the  amount 
of  work  he  will  do  for  it,  after  his  proper  day's  work 
is  over.  I  know  several  men  who  frequently  add 
two  or  three  shillings  to  their  week's  money  in  this 
way.  To  give  an  instance  of  how  they  go  on,  one 
evening  recently  I  was  unexpectedly  wanting  to  send 
a  heavy  parcel  into  the  town.  Going  out  to  seek 
somebody  who  would  take  it,  I  chanced  upon  a  man 
— very  well  known  to  me — who  was  at  work  just 
within  the  hedge  of  a  villa  garden,  where  he  was 
erecting  on  a  pole  a  notice-board  announcing  a  "  sale 
of  work  "  shortly  to  be  held.  He  had  obviously 
nearly  done,  so  I  proposed  my  errand  to  him.  Yes  ; 
he  would  go  as  soon  as  he  had  finished  what  he  was 
doing.  Then,  perceiving  that  he  looked  tired,  I  com- 
mented on  the  fact.  He  smiled.  "  I  bin  mowin' 
all  day  over  there  at  .  ,  .,"  and  he  mentioned  a 
farm  two  or  three  miles  distant.  Still,  he  could  go 
with  my  parcel.  This  was  at  about  seven  o'clock 
in  the  evening,  and  would  mean  a  two-mile  walk 
for  him.     The  very  next  evening,  when  it  was  rain- 


WAYS  AND  MEANS  85 

ing,  I  saw  him  in  the  churchyard  digging  a  grave. 
"  Haven't  been  mowing  to-day,  have  you  ?"  "  Yes," 
he  said  cheerily.  Mowing  is,  perhaps,  the  most 
fatiguing  work  a  man  can  do,  but  fatigue  was 
nothing  to  this  man  where  a  few  shilHngs  could  be 
earned.  His  ordinary  wages,  I  beHeve,  are  eighteen 
shilHngs  a  week,  but  during  last  winter  he  was  out 
of  work  for  six  or  eight  weeks. 

I  have  known  this  man,  and  others  also,  to  make 
now  and  then  quite  a  little  harvest,  amounting  to 
several  pounds,  at  the  unsavoury  work  of  cleaning 
out  cess-pits.  One  man,  indeed — a  farm-labourer 
by  day — had  for  a  time  a  sort  of  trade  connection 
in  the  parish  for  this  employment,  and  would  add 
the  labour  of  two  or  three  nights  a  week  to  that  of 
his  days  ;  but,  of  course,  he  could  not  keep  it  up 
for  long.  It  is  highly-paid  work,  as  it  ought  to  be  ; 
but  the  ten  shillings  or  so  that  a  man  may  earn  at 
it  four  or  five  times  a  year  come  rather  as  a  welcome 
windfall  than  as  a  part  of  income  upon  which  he 
can  rely. 

The  seasonal  employments  are  disappearing  from 
the  neighbourhood,  as  agriculture  gives  place  to  the 
residential  interests.  Hop-picking  used  to  be  the 
most  notable  of  them,  and  even  now,  spite  of  the 
much-diminished  acreage  under  hops,  it  is  found 
necessary  at  the  schools  to  defer  the  long  holiday 
until  September,  because  it  would  be  impossible  to 
get  the  children  to  school  while  the  hops  are  being 
picked.     For  all  the  family  goes  into  the  gardens — 


86  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

all,  that  is  to  say,  who  have  no  constant  work.  The 
season  now  lasts  some  three  weeks,  during  which  a 
family  may  earn  anything  from  two  to  four  pounds. 
At  this  season  a  few  of  the  more  experienced  and 
trustworthy  men — my  friend  who  mows,  and  digs 
graves,  and  runs  errands  is  one  of  them — do  better 
in  the  hop-kilns  at  "  drying  "  than  in  the  gardens. 
Theirs  is  an  anxious,  a  responsible,  and  almost  a 
sleepless  duty.  The  pay  for  it,  when  I  last  heard, 
was  two  guineas  a  week,  and — pleasant  survival 
from  an  older  mode  of  employment — the  prudent 
hop-grower  gives  his  dryers  a  pound  at  Christmas 
as  a  sort  of  retaining-fee.  It  is  to  be  observed  that 
failure  of  the  crop  is  too  frequent  an  occurrence. 
In  years  when  there  are  no  hops,  the  people  feel 
the  want  of  their  extra  money  all  the  following 
winter. 

Another  custom,  as  it  is  all  but  extinct,  needs 
only  a  passing  mention  now.  No  longer  do  large 
gangs  of  our  labourers — with  some  of  their  women- 
folk, perhaps — troop  off  "  down  into  Sussex  "  for 
the  August  harvesting  there,  and  for  the  hoeing 
that  follows  it ;  and  no  longer  is  the  village  enriched 
by  the  gold  they  used  to  bring  back.  When  July 
is  ending,  perhaps  two  or  three  men,  whether  en- 
ticed by  some  dream  of  old  harvesting  joys  in  sight 
of  the  sea,  or  driven  by  want  at  home,  may  stray 
off  for  a  few  weeks  ;  but  I  do  not  hear  that  their 
adventure  is  ever  so  prosperous  nowadays  as  to 
induce  others  to  follow  suit. 


WAYS  AND  MEANS  87 

Where  the  income  of  a  family  from  the  united 
efforts  of  the  father  and  mother  is  still  so  small, 
every  shilling  that  can  be  added  to  it  is  precious, 
and,  consequently,  the  children  have  to  begin  earn- 
ing as  early  as  they  may.     Hence  there  is  not  much 
lingering  at  school,  after  the  minimum  age  for  leaving 
has  been  reached.     Nay,  some  little  boys,  and  here 
and  there  a  little  girl,  will  make  from  a  shilling  to 
half  a  crown  a  week  at  carrying  out  milk  or  news- 
papers before  morning  school  begins,  so  that  they 
go  to  their  lessons  with  the  first  freshness  taken  off 
them  by  three  or  four  miles  of  burdened  walking. 
In  view  of  the  wear  and  tear  of  shoe-leather,  even 
those   parents   who   countenance   the   practice   are 
doubtful  of  its  economy.     Still,  a  few  of  them  en- 
courage it  ;  and  though,  if  spread  out  amongst  the 
families,  these  pitiful  little  earnings  could  hardly 
make  a  perceptible  difference  to  the  average  income. 
I  mention  them  here  in  order  to  leave  no  source  of 
income  unnoticed.     When  school-days  are  over,  the 
family  begins  to  benefit  from  the  children's  work. 
At  fourteen  years  old,  few  of  the  boys  are  put  to 
trades,  but  most  of  them  get  something  to  do  in 
the  town,  where  there  is  a  great  demand  for  errand- 
boys.     Their  wages  start  at  about  four  shillings  a 
week,  increasing  in  a  few  years  to  as  much  as  seven 
or  eight.     Then,  at  seventeen  years  old  or  so,  the 
untrained  youths  begin  to  compete  in  the  labour 
market  with  the  men,  taking  too  early,  and  at  too 
small  wages,  to  the  driving  of  carts  or  even  to  work 


88  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

in  the  gravel-pits.  The  amount  of  help  that  these 
fellows  then  contribute  towards  the  family  expenses 
out  of  their  twelve  or  fourteen  shillings  a  week 
depends  upon  the  parents,  but  it  is  something  if 
they  merely  keep  themselves  ;  and  I  believe,  though 
I  do  not  certainly  know,  that  it  is  customary  for 
them  to  pay  a  few  shillings  for  their  lodging  at 
least. 

For  girls  leaving  school  there  is  no  difficulty  in 
finding,  as  they  say,  "  a  little  place  "  for  a  start  in 
domestic  service  ;  for  even  the  cheaper  villas  which 
have  sprung  up  around  the  town  generally  need 
their  cheap  drudges.  Hence,  at  an  earlier  age  than 
the  boys,  the  girls  are  taken  off  their  parents'  hands 
and  become  self-supporting.  True,  it  is  long  before 
they  can  earn  much  more  in  money  than  suffices  for 
their  own  needs  in  clothes  and  boots — they  cannot 
send  many  shillings  home  to  their  mothers  ;  but  no 
doubt  a  family  may  be  found  here  and  there  enriched 
to  the  extent  of  a  pound  or  two  a  year  by  the  labour 
of  the  girls. 

Putting  the  various  items  together,  it  might  seem 
that  in  favourable  circumstances  there  would  be 
some  twenty-three  or  twenty-four  shillings  a  week 
for  a  family  to  live  on  all  the  year  round.  But  it 
must  be  remembered,  first,  that  the  circumstances 
seldom  remain  favourable  for  many  months  together ; 
and,  second,  that  the  greater  number  of  families 
have  to  do  without  those  small  supplementary  sums 
provided  by  the  work  of  children,  or  by  odd  jobs, 


WAYS  AND  MEANS  89 

or  by  the  good  wages  of  hop-drying,  and  so  forth. 
Nor  is  this  the  only  deduction  to  be  made.  As  I 
have  already  explained,  in  the  cases  where  money 
is  most  needed — namely,  where  there  is  a  family  of 
little  children — the  mother  cannot  go  out  to  work, 
and  the  income  is  reduced  to  the  bare  amount  earned 
by  the  father  alone.  And  these  cases  are  very 
plentiful,  while,  on  the  contrary,  those  in  which  the 
best  conditions  prevail  are  very  scarce.  Taking  the 
village  all  through,  and  balancing  bad  times  against 
good  ones,  I  question  if  the  income  of  the  labouring 
class  families  averages  twenty  shillings  a  week  ; 
indeed,  I  should  be  greatly  surprised  to  learn  that 
it  amounted  to  so  much.  In  very  many  instances 
eighteen  shillings  or  even  less  would  be  the  more 
correct  estimate. 

One  other  item  remains  to  be  recognized,  although 
its  value  is  too  variable  to  be  computed  with  any 
exactness  in  money  and  added  to  the  sum  of  an 
average  week's  income.  What  is  the  worth  to  a 
labourer  of  the  crops  he  grows  in  his  garden  ?  It 
depends,  obviously,  on  the  man's  skill,  and  the  size 
of  the  garden,  and  the  clemency  of  the  seasons — 
matters,  all  of  them,  in  which  any  attempt  at 
generalization  must  be  received  with  suspicion.  All 
that  can  be  said  with  certainty  is  that  most  of  the 
cottages  in  the  valley  have  gardens,  and  that  most 
of  the  cottagers  are  diligent  to  cultivate  them.  But 
when  the  circumstances  are  considered,  it  will  be 
plain  that  the  value  of  the  produce  must  not  be  put 


90  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

very  high.  The  amount  of  ground  that  can  be 
worked  in  the  spring  and  summer  evenings  is,  after 
all,  not  much  ;  it  is  but  little  manure  that  can  be 
bought  out  of  a  total  money-income  of  eighteen 
shillings  a  week  ;  and  even  good  seed  is,  for  the  same 
reason,  seldom  obtained.  The  return  for  the  labour 
expended,  therefore,  is  seldom  equal  to  what  it 
should  be,  and  we  may  surmise  that  he  is  a  fortunate 
man,  or  an  unusually  industrious  one,  who  can  make 
his  gardening  worth  more  than  two  shillings  a  week 
to  him  in  food.  There  must  be  many  cottages  in 
the  valley  where  the  yield  of  the  garden  is  scarcely 
half  that  value. 

To  complete  the  picture  of  the  people's  ways  and 
means,  it  ought  next  to  be  shown  how  the  money 
income  is  spent  by  an  average  family.  To  do  that, 
however,  would  be  beyond  my  power,  even  if  it  were 
possible  to  determine  what  an  "  average  family  "is. 
I  know,  of  course,  that  rent  takes  from  three  and 
sixpence  a  week  for  the  poorest  hovels  to  six  shillings 
for  the  newer  tenements  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
parish  ;  in  other  words,  that  from  a  quarter  to  a 
third  of  the  labourer's  whole  income  goes  back  im- 
mediately into  the  pockets  of  the  employing  classes 
for  shelter  alone.  I  know  also  that  payments  into 
benefit  societies  drain  away  another  eightpence  to 
a  shilling  a  week.  I  realize  that  very  often  the 
weekly  bread  bill  runs  away  with  nearly  half  the 
money  that  is  left,  and  so  I  can  reckon  that  tea  and 
groceries,  boots  and  clothes,  firing  and  light,  have 


WAYS  AND  MEANS  91 

somehow  to  be  obtained  at  a  cost  of  no  more  than 
seven  or  eight  shillings  weekly.  But  these  calcula- 
tions fail  to  satisfy  me.  They  leave  unsolved  the 
problem  of  those  last  seven  or  eight  shillings,  on  the 
expenditure  of  which  turns  the  really  vital  question 
which  an  inquiry  like  this  ought  to  settle.  How  do 
the  people  make  both  ends  meet  ?  Are  the  seven 
shillings  as  a  rule  enough  for  so  many  purposes?  or 
almost,  but  not  quite  enough  ?  or  nothing  like  enough  ? 
After  all,  I  do  not  know.  Information  breaks  down 
just  at  this  point  where  information  is  most  to  be 
desired. 

There  is  no  doubt  at  all,  however,  as  to  the  strain 
and  stress  of  the  general  struggle  to  live  in  the 
valley,  the  sheer  wear  and  tear  of  temper  and 
spirits  involved  in  the  daily  grappling  with  that 
problem.  Everywhere  one  comes  across  S3miptoms 
of  it — partial  evidences — but  the  most  complete 
exposition  that  I  have  had  was  given,  some  years 
ago  now,  by  a  woman  who  had  no  intention  of  com- 
plaining. She  came  to  me  with  a  message  from  a 
neighbour  who  was  ill,  but,  in  explanation  of  her 
part  in  helping  him,  she  began  to  speak  of  her  own 
affairs.  With  some  of  these  affairs  I  was  already 
acquainted.  Thus  I  knew  her  to  be  the  mother  of 
an  exceptionally  large  family,  so  that  her  case  could 
not  be  quite  typical.  But  I  also  knew  that  her  hus- 
band had  been  in  constant  work  for  many  years,  so 
that,  in  her  case,  there  had  been  no  period  when 


92  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

the  income  at  her  disposal  ceased  altogether,  as  in 
the  case  of  so  many  other  women  otherwise  less 
handicapped  than  she.  I  was  aware,  too,  that  she 
herself  helped  out  the  family  earnings  by  taking  in 
washing. 

To  these  items  of  vague  knowledge  she  added  a 
few  particulars.  As  to  income,  I  learnt  that  her 
husband — a  labourer  on  a  farm  some  three  miles 
away — earned  fifteen  shillings  a  week  during  the 
winter,  and  rather  more  in  the  summer  months, 
when  he  was  allowed  to  do  "  piece-work."  The 
piece-work  had  the  further  advantage  of  permitting 
him  to  begin  so  early  in  the  day — four  o'clock  was 
his  time  in  summer — that  he  usually  got  home  again 
by  four  in  the  afternoon,  and  was  able  to  do  better 
than  most  men  with  his  garden.  Amongst  other 
things,  he  raised  flowers  for  sale.  He  was  wont  to 
send  to  a  well-known  nursery  in  Norfolk  for  his  seeds 
— china-asters  and  stocks  were  his  speciality — and 
he  reared  his  plants  under  a  little  glass  "  light  " 
which  he  had  made  for  himself  out  of  a  few  old 
window-sashes.  His  pains  with  these  flowers  were 
unsparing.  Neighbours  laughed  at  him  (so  his  wife 
assured  me,  with  some  pride)  because  he  went  to 
the  plants  down  on  his  hands  and  knees,  smoking 
each  one  with  tobacco  to  clear  it  from  green  aphis. 
He  also  raised  fifty  or  sixty  sticks  of  celery  every 
year,  which  sold  for  threepence  apiece.  Meanwhile 
he  by  no  means  neglected  his  main  business  as  a 
cottage-gardener — namely,    the    growing    of    food- 


WAYS  AND  MEANS  93 

crops  for  home  use.  By  renting  for  five  shillings 
a  year  an  extra  plot  of  ground  near  his  cottage,  he 
was  able  to  keep  his  large  family  supplied  with 
potatoes  for  quite  half  the  year.  It  was  much  to 
do.  They  wanted  nearly  a  bushel  of  potatoes  a 
week,  the  wife  said  ;  and  if  that  was  so,  the  man 
was  adding,  in  the  shape  of  potatoes  at  half  a  crown 
a  bushel,  the  value  of  more  than  three  pounds  a 
year  to  his  income.  No  doubt  he  grew  other  vege- 
tables too — parsnips,  carrots,  turnips,  and  some 
green-stuff — but  these  were  not  mentioned.  A  little 
further  help  was  at  last  coming  from  the  family,  the 
eldest  daughter  having  begun  to  pay  half  the  rent 
out  of  her  earnings  as  a  servant-girl. 

Help  certainly  must  have  been  welcome.  There 
were  two  other  girls  in  service,  and  therefore  off  their 
parents'  hands  ;  but  six  children — the  youngest  only 
a  few  months  old — were  still  at  home,  dependent  on 
what  their  father  and  mother  could  earn.  Of  these, 
the  eldest  was  a  boy  near  thirteen.  "  I  shall  be  glad 
when  he's  schoolin's  over,"  the  mother  said  ;  and 
she  had  applied  for  a  "  labour  certificate  "  which 
would  allow  him  to  finish  school  as  a  "  half-timer," 
and  to  go  out  and  earn  a  little  money. 

Since  their  marriage,  twenty-three  years  earlier, 
the  couple  had  occupied  always  the  came  cottage, 
at  a  rental  of  three  shillings  a  week.  After  the  first 
twenty  years — the  property  then  changing  owners — 
the  first  few  repairs  in  all  that  long  period  had  been 
undertaken.     That   is   to   say,   the   outside   wood- 


94  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

work  was  painted  ;  a  promise  was  given  to  do  up 
the  interior  ;  the  company's  water  was  laid  on  ;  and 
— the  rent  was  raised  to  three-and-sixpence.  The 
woman  thought  this  a  hardship  ;  but  she  said  that 
her  husband,  looking  at  the  bright  side  of  things, 
rejoiced  to  think  that  now  the  water  from  the  old 
tank,  hitherto  so  precious  for  household  uses,  might 
be  spared  for  his  flowers. 

After  the  rent  was  paid — with  the  daughter's 
help — there  were  about  fourteen  shillings  left.  But 
the  man  was  an  "  Oddfellow,"  and  his  subscription 
was  nine  shillings  a  quarter,  or  eightpence  halfpenny 
a  week.  In  prudence,  that  amount  should  perhaps 
have  been  put  by  every  week,  but  apparently  pru- 
dence often  had  to  give  way  to  pressing  needs. 
"  When  the  club  money's  due,  that's  when  we  finds 
it  wust,"  the  woman  remarked.  "  Sometimes  I've 
said  to  'n,  '  I  dunno  how  we  be  goin'  to  git  through 
the  week.'  '  Oh,'  he  says,  '  don't  you  worry.  We 
shall  get  to  the  end  of  'n  somehow.'  " 

But  she  did  not  explain,  nor  is  it  easy  to  conceive, 
how  it  was  done.  For  observe,  the  weekly  bushel 
of  potatoes  did  not  feed  the  family,  even  for  half 
the  year.  "  A  gallon  of  potatoes  a  day,  that's  what 
it  is,"  she  had  said  ;  and  then  she  had  enumerated 
other  items.  "  A  gallon  of  bread  a  day,"  was 
needed  too,  besides  a  gallon  of  flour  once  a  week 
"  for  puddings."  In  other  words,  bread  and  flour 
cost  upwards  of  six  shillings  weekly.  Seeing  that 
this  left  but  eight  shillings  for  eight  people,  it  is 


WAYS  AND  MEANS  95 

small  wonder  that  the  club-money  was  rarely  put 
by,  and  great  wonder  how  the  family  managed  at 
all  when  the  club-money  was  wanted  in  a  lump. 
It  must  have  been  that  they  went  short  that  week. 
For  instance,  they  would  do  without  puddings,  and 
so  save  on  flour  and  firing  ;  and  the  man  would 
forego  his  tobacco — he  had  never  any  time  to  visit 
the  public-house,  so  that  there  was  nothing  to  be 
saved  in  that  direction.  Yet  assuming  all  this,  and 
assuming  that  the  eldest  daughter  advanced  a  few 
extra  shillings,  still  the  situation  remains  baffling. 
On  what  could  they  save,  out  of  eight  shillings  ? 
Probably  one  or  other  of  the  children,  or  may  be 
the  mother  herself,  would  make  an  old  pair  of  boots 
serve  just  one  more  week,  until  there  was  money  in 
hand  again  ;  and  that  would  go  far  to  tide  the  family 
over.  Yet  the  next  week  would  then  have  to  be 
a  pinched  one  ;  for,  said  the  woman,  "  boots  is  the 
wust  of  all.  It  wants  a  new  pair  for  one  or  t'other 
of  us  purty  near  every  week." 

So  far  this  woman's  testimony.  It  is  corroborated 
by  what  other  cottagers  have  told  me.  A  man 
said,  looking  fondly  at  his  children  :  "  I  has  to  buy 
a  new  pair  o'  shoes  for  one  or  other  of  us  every  week. 
Or  if  I  misses  one  week,  then  next  week  I  wants 
two  pair."  Others,  again,  have  told  of  spending 
five  to  six  shillings  a  week  on  bread.  But  of  the 
less  essential  items  one  never  hears.  Even  of  clothes 
there  is  rarely  any  talk,  and  of  coal  not  often  ;  nor 
yet  often  of  meat,  or  groceries.     I  do  not  suggest 


96  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

that  meat  and  groceries  are  foresworn,  but  it  would 
appear  that   they  come  second  in  the  household 
expenses.     They  are  luxuries,  only  to  be  obtained 
if  and  when  more  necessary  things  have  been  pro- 
vided.    With  regard  to  firing — a  little  coal  is  made 
to  go  a  long  way  in  the  labourer's  cottage  ;  and  with 
regard  to  clothes — it  is  doubtful  if  anything  new  is 
bought,  in  many  families,  from  year's  end  to  year's 
end.     At  "  rummage  sales,"  for  a  few  pence,  the 
women  are  now  able  to  pick  up  surprising  bargains 
in  cast-off  garments,  which  they  adapt  as  best  they 
can  for  their  own  or  their  children's  wear.     Econ- 
omies  like   this,    however,    still   hardly   suffice   to 
explain  how  the  scanty  resources  are  really  spread 
out.     Apart  from  a  few  cases  of  palpable  destitution, 
it  is  not  obvious  that  any  families  in  the  village 
suffer  actual  want  ;  and  seeing  that  inquiries  in  the 
school   in   recent   winters  have  failed   to   discover 
more  than  two  or  three  sets  of  children  manifestly 
wanting  food,   one  is  led  to  conclude  that  acute 
poverty  is  of  rare  occurrence  here.     On  the  other 
hand,  all  the  calculations  suggest  that  a  majority 
perhaps  of  the  labouring  folk  endure  a  less  intense 
but  chronic  poverty,  in  which,  at  some  point  or  other 
every  day,  the  provision  for  bare  physical  needs  falls 
a  little  short. 


VII 

GOOD   TEMPER 

In   view   of   their   unpromising   circumstances   the 
people  as  a  rule  are  surprisingly  cheerful.     It  is  true 
there  are  never  any  signs  in  the  valley  of  that  almost 
festive  temper,  that  glad  relish  of  life,  which,  if  we 
may  believe  the  poets,   used   to   characterize   the 
English  village  of  old  times.  Tested  by  that  standard 
of  happiness,  it  is  a  low-spirited,  mirthless,  and  all 
but  silent  population  that  we  have  here  now.     Of 
public  and  exuberant  enjojmient  there  is  nothing 
whatever.     And  yet,  subdued  though  they  may  be, 
the  cottagers  usually  manage  to  keep  in  tolerable 
spirits.     A  woman  made  me  smile  tlie  other  day, 
I  had  seen  her  husband  a  week  earlier,  and  found 
him  rheumatic  and  despondent  ;   but  when   I   in- 
quired how  he  did,  she  conceded,  with  a  laugh  : 
"  Yes,  he  had  a  bit  o'  rheumatism,  but  he's  better 
now.     He  'ad  the  'ump  then,  too."     I  inferred  that 
she  regarded  his  dejection  as  quite  an  unnecessary 
thing  ;  and  this  certainly  is  the  customary  attitude. 
The  people  are  slow  to  admit  that  they  are  un- 
happy.    At  a  "  Penny  Readings  "  an  entertainer 
caused  some  displeasure  by  a  quite  innocent  joke 

97  7 


98  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

in  this  connection.     Coming  through  the  village,  he 
noticed  the  sign  of  one  of  the  public-houses — The 
Happy  Home — and   invented  a  conundrum  which 
he  put  from  the  platform  :  "  Why  was  this  a  very 
miserable  village  ?"     But  the  answer,  "  Because  it 
has  only  one  Happy  Home  in  it,"  gave  considerable 
offence.     For  we  are  not  used  to  these  subtleties  of 
language,  and  the  point  was  missed,  a  good  many  folk 
protesting  that  we  have  "  a.lot  o'  happy  homes  "  here. 
That  they  should  be  so  touchy  about  it  is  perhaps 
suggestive — pitifully  suggestive — of  a  suspicion  in 
them    that   their   happiness   is   open   to   question. 
None  the  less,  the  general  impression  conveyed  by 
the  people's  manners  is  that  of  a  quiet  and  rather 
cheery  humour,  far  indeed  from  gaiety,  but  farther 
still  from  wretchedness.     And  in  matters  like  this 
one's  senses  are  not  deceived.     I  know  that  my 
neighbours  have  abundant  excuses  for  being  down- 
hearted ;  and,  as  described  in  an  earlier  chapter,  I 
sometimes  overhear  their  complainings  ;   but  more 
often  than  not  the  evidence  of  voice-tones  and  stray 
words  is  reassuring  rather  than  dispiriting. 

Notice,  for  instance,  the  women  who  have  done 
their  shopping  in  the  town  early  in  the  morning,  and 
are  coming  home  for  a  day's  work.  They  are  out 
of  breath,  and  bothered  with  their  armfuls  of  pur- 
chases ;  but  nine  times  out  of  ten  their  faces  look 
hopeful ;  there  is  no  sound  of  grievance  or  of  worry 
in  their  talk  ;  their  smiling  "  Good-morning  "  to  you 
proves  somehow  that  it  is  not  a  bad  morning  with 


GOOD-TEMPER  99 

them.  One  day  a  woman  going  to  the  town  a  little 
late  met  another  already  returning,  loaded  up  with 
goods.  "  'Ullo,  Mrs.  Fry,"  she  laughed,  "  you  be 
'bliged  to  be  fust,  then  ?"  "  Yes  ;  but  I  en't  bought 
it  all ;  I  thought  you'd  be  comin',  so  I  left  some  for 
you."  "  That's  right  of  ye.  'En' i  it  ^  nice  mornin'?" 
"Jest  what  we  wants!  My  old  man  was  up  an' 
in  he's  garden  ..."  The  words  grow  indistinguish- 
able as  you  get  farther  away  ;  you  don't  hear  what 
the  "  old  man  "  was  doing  so  early,  but  the  country 
voices  sound  for  a  long  time,  comfortably  tuned  to 
the  pleasantness  of  the  day. 

This  sort  of  thing  is  so  common  that  I  seldom 
notice  it,  unless  it  is  varied  in  some  way  that  attracts 
attention.  For  instance,  I  could  not  help  listening 
to  a  woman  who  was  pushing  her  baby  in  a  peram- 
bulator down  the  hill.  The  baby  sat  facing  her, 
as  bland  as  a  little  image  of  Buddha,  and  as  unre- 
sponsive, but  she  was  chaffing  it.  "  Well,  you  be 
a  funny  little  gal,  hen't  ye  ?  Why,  you  be  goin' 
back'ards  into  the  town  !  Whoever  beared  tell  o' 
such  a  thing — goin'  to  the  town  hack'dnds.  You  he 
a  funny  little  gal  !"  To  me  it  was  a  funny  little 
procession,  with  a  touch  of  the  pathetic  hidden 
away  in  it  somewhere ;  but  it  bore  convincing 
witness  to  happiness  in  at  least  one  home  in  our 
valley. 

It  is  not  so  easy  to  discover,  or  rather  to  point 
out,  the  corresponding  evidence  in  the  demeanour 
of  the  men,  although  when  one  knows  them  one  is 


100  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

aware  that  their  attitude  towards  life  is  quite  as 
courageous  as  the  women's,  if  not  quite  so  playful. 
I  confess  that  I  rarely  see  them  until  they  have  put 
a  day's  work  behind  them  ;  and  they  may  be  more 
lightsome  when  they  start  in  the  morning,  at  five 
o'clock  or  soon  after  it.  Be  that  as  it  may,  in  the 
evenings  I  find  them  taciturn,  nonchalant  rather 
than  cheerful,  not  much  disposed  to  be  sprightly. 
Long-striding  and  ungainly,  they  walk  home  ;  be- 
tween six  o'clock  and  seven  you  may  be  sure  of  seeing 
some  of  them  coming  up  the  hill  from  the  town, 
alone  or  by  twos  and  threes.  They  speak  but  little ; 
they  look  tired  and  stern  ;  very  often  there  is  nothing 
but  a  twinkle  in  their  eyes  to  prove  to  you  that  they 
are  not  morose.  But  in  fact  they  are  still  taking 
life  seriously  ;  their  thoughts,  and  hopes  too,  are 
bent  on  the  further  work  they  mean  to  do  when  they 
shall  have  had  their  tea.  For  the  more  old-fashioned 
men  allow  themselves  but  little  rest,  and  in  many 
a  cottage  garden  of  an  evening  you  may  see  the 
father  of  the  family  soberly  at  work,  and  liking  it 
too.  If  his  wife  is  able  to  come  and  look  on  and 
chatter  to  him,  or  if  he  can  hear  her  laughing  with  a 
friend  in  the  next  garden,  so  much  the  better  ;  but 
he  does  not  stop  work.  Impelled,  as  I  shall  show 
later,  by  other  reasons  besides  those  of  economy, 
many  of  the  men  make  prodigiously  long  days  of 
it,  at  least  during  the  summer  months.  I  have 
known  them  to  leave  home  at  five  or  even  four  in 
the  morning,  walk  five  or  six  miles,  do  a  day's  work, 


GOOD  TEMPER  loi 

walk  back  in  the  evening  so  as  to  reach  home  at  six 
or  seven  o'clock,  and  then,  after  a  meal,  go  on  again 
in  their  gardens  until  eight  or  nine.  They  seem  to 
be  under  some  spiritual  need  to  keep  going  ;  their 
conscience  enslaves  them.  So  they  grow  thin  and 
gaunt  in  body,  grave  and  very  quiet  in  their  spirits. 
But  sullen  they  very  rarely  are.  With  rheumatism 
and  "  the  'ump  "  combined  a  man  will  sometimes 
grow  exasperated  and  be  heard  to  speak  irritably, 
but  usually  it  is  a  very  amiable  "  Good-evening  " 
that  greets  you  from  across  the  hedge  where  one  of 
these  men  is  silently  digging  or  hoeing. 

The  nature  of  their  work,  shall  I  say,  tends  to 
bring  them  to  quietness  of  soul  ?  I  hesitate  to  say 
it,  because,  though  work  upon  the  ground  with  spade 
or  hoe  has  such  a  soothing  influence  upon  the 
amateur,  there  is  a  difference  between  doing  it  for 
pleasure  during  a  spare  hour  and  doing  it  as  a  duty 
after  a  twelve  hours'  day,  and  without  any  prospect 
of  holiday  as  long  as  one  lives.  Nevertheless  it  is 
plain  to  be  seen  that,  albeit  their  long  days  too  often 
reduce  them  to  a  state  of  apathy,  these  quiet  and 
patient  men  experience  no  less  often  a  compensating 
delight  in  the  friendly  feeling  of  the  tool  responding 
to  their  skill,  and  in  the  fine  freshness  of  the  soil 
as  they  work  it,  and  in  the  solace,  so  varied  and  so 
unfailingly  fresh,  of  the  open  air.  Thus  much  at 
least  I  have  seen  in  their  looks,  and  have  heard  in 
their  speech.  On  a  certain  June  evening  when  it 
had  set  in  wet,  five  large-limbed  men,  just  off  their 


102  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

work  on  the  railway,  came  striding  past  me  up  the 
hill.  They  had  sacks  over  their  shoulders  ;  their 
clothes  and  boots,  from  working  in  gravel  all  day, 
were  of  the  same  yellowish-brown  colour  as  the 
sacks  ;  they  were  getting  decidedly  wet  ;  but  they 
looked  enviably  easy-going  and  unconcerned.  As 
they  went  by  me  one  after  another,  one  sleepy-eyed 
man,  comfortably  smoking  his  pipe,  vouchsafed  no 
word  or  glance.  But  the  others,  with  friendly 
sidelong  glance  at  me,  all  spoke  ;  and  their  placid 
voices  were  full  of  rich  contentment.  "  Good- 
night "  ;  "  Nice  rain  "  ;  "  G'd-evenin'  "  ;  and,  last 
of  all,  "  This'W  make  the  young  taters  grow !" 
The  man  who  said  this  looked  all  alert,  as  if  the 
blood  were  dancing  in  him  with  enjoyment  of  the 
rain ;  his  eyes  were  beaming  with  pleasure.  So  the 
five  passed  up  the  hill  homewards,  to  have  some 
supper,  and  then,  perhaps,  watch  and  listen  to  the 
rain  on  their  gardens  until  it  was  time  to  go  to  bed. 
I  ought  to  mention,  though  I  may  hardly  illus- 
trate, one  faculty  which  is  a  great  support  to  many 
of  the  men — I  mean  the  masculine  gift  of  "  humour." 
Not  playful-witted  like  the  women,  nor  yet  apt,  like 
the  women,  to  refresh  their  spirits  in  the  indulgence 
of  sentiment  and  emotion,  but  rather  stolid  and 
inclined  to  dim  brooding  thought,  they  are  able  to 
see  the  laughable  side  of  their  own  misadventures 
and  discomforts ;  and  thanks  to  this  they  keep  a  sense 
of  proportion,  as  though  perceiving  that  if  their 
labour  accomplishes  its  end,  it  does  not  really  matter 


GOOD  TEMPER  103 

that  they  get  tired,  or  dirty,  or  wet  through  in  doing 
it.     This  is  a  social  gift,  of  small  avail  to  the  men 
working  alone  in  their  gardens  ;  but  it  serves  them 
well  during  the  day's  work  with  their  mates,  or  when 
two  or  three  of  them  together  tackle  some  job  of  their 
own,  such  as  cleaning  out  a  well,  or  putting  up  a 
fowl-house.     Then,   if  somebody  gets  splashed,  or 
knocks  his  knuckles,  and  softly  swears,  his  wrath 
turns  to  a  grin  as  the  little  dry  chuckle  or  the  sly 
remark  from  the  others  reminds  him  that  his  feelings 
are  understood.     It  is  well  worth  while  to  be  present 
at  these  times.      I  laugh  now  to  think  of  some  of 
them  that  I  have  enjoyed  ;  but  I  will  not  risk  almost 
certain  failure  in  trying  to  describe  them,  for  their 
flavour  depends  on  minute  details  into  which  I  have 
no  space  to  enter. 

But  whatever  alleviations  there  may  be  to  their 
troubles,  the  people's  geniality  is  still  noteworthy. 
In  circumstances  that  contrast  so  pitifully  with  those 
of  the  employing  classes,  it  would  seem  natural  if 
they  were  full  of  bitterness  and  envy ;  yet  that  is  by 
no  means  the  case.  Being  born  to  poverty  and  the 
labouring  life,  they  accept  the  position  as  if  it  were 
entirely  natural.  Of  course  it  has  its  drawbacks  ; 
but  they  suppose  that  it  takes  all  sorts  to  make  a 
world,  and  since  they  are  of  the  labouring  sort  they 
must  make  the  best  of  it.  With  this  simple  philo- 
sophy they  have  contrived  hitherto  to  meet  their 
troubles  calmly,  not  blaming  other  people  for  them, 
unless  in  individual  cases,  and  hardly  dreaming  of 


104  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

translating  them  into  social  injustice.  They  have 
no  sense  of  oppression  to  poison  their  lives.  The 
truth  which  economists  begin  to  recognize,  that 
where  there  are  wealthy  and  idle  classes  there  must 
as  an  inevitable  result  be  classes  who  are  impover- 
ished and  overworked,  has  not  found  its  way  into  the 
villager's  head. 

So,    supported   by   an   instinctive   fatalism,    the 
people  have  taken  their  plight  for  granted,  without 
harbouring  resentment  against  the  more  fortunate. 
It  may  be  added  that  most  of  them  are  convinced 
believers  in  those  fallacies  which  cluster  around  the 
phrase  "  making  work."     It  were  strange  if  they 
were  not.     The  labourer  lives  by  being  employed  at 
work  ;  and,  knowing  his  employer  personally — this 
or  that  farmer  or   tradesman  or  villa-resident — he 
sees  the  work  he  lives  by  actually  being  "  made." 
Only  very  rarely  does  it  occur  to  him  that  when  he 
goes  to  the  shop  he,  too,  makes  work.    In  bad  times, 
perhaps,  he  gets  an  inkling  of  it  ;  and  then,  when 
wages   are  scarce,    and   the   public-house   landlord 
grumbles,  old-fashioned  villagers  will  say,  "Ah,  they 
misses  the  poor  man,  ye  see  !"     But  the  idea  is  too 
abstract   to  be  followed  to  its  logical  conclusion. 
The  people  do  not  see  the  multitudes  at  work  for 
them   in  other  counties,   making   their  boots   and 
ready-made  clothes,   getting  their  coal,   importing 
their  cheap  provisions  ;  but  they  do  see,  and  know  by 
name,  the  well-to-do  of  the  neighbourhood,  who  have 
new  houses  built  and  new  gardens  laid  out ;   and 


GOOD  TEMPER  105 

they  naturally  enough  infer  that  labour  would  perish 
if  there  were  no  well-to-do  people  to  be  supplied. 

Against  the  rich  man,  therefore,  the  labourers 
have  no  sort  of  animosity.  If  he  will  spend  money 
freely,  the  richer  he  is  the  better.  Throughout  the 
south  of  England  this  is  the  common  attitude.  I 
remember,  not  long  ago,  on  a  holiday,  coming  to  a 
village  which  looked  rarely  prosperous  for  its  county, 
owing,  I  was  told,  to  the  fact  that  the  county  lunatic 
asylum  near  by  caused  money  to  be  spent  there.  In 
the  next  village,  which  was  in  a  deplorable  state,  and 
had  no  asylum,  the  people  were  looking  enviously 
towards  this  one,  and  wishing  that  at  least  their 
absentee  landlords  would  come  and  hunt  the  neigh- 
bourhood, though  it  appeared  that  one  of  these 
gentlemen  was  a  Bishop.  But  the  labouring  folk 
were  not  exacting  as  to  the  sort  of  person — lunatics, 
fox-hunters,  Bishops — anybody  would  be  welcome 
who  would  spend  riches  in  a  way  to  "  make  work." 
And  so  here.  This  village  looks  up  to  those  who 
control  wealth  as  if  they  were  the  sources  of  it  ;  and 
if  there  is  a  little  dislike  of  some  of  them  personally, 
there  has  so  far  appeared  but  little  bitterness  of 
feeling  against  them  as  a  class. 

I  do  not  say  that  there  has  never  been  any  grumb- 
ling. One  day,  years  ago,  an  old  friend  of  mine 
broke  out,  in  his  most  contemptuous  manner, 
"  What  d'ye  think  Master  Dash  Blank  bin  up  to 
now  ?"  He  named  the  owner  of  a  large  estate  near 
the  town.     "  Bin  an'  promised  all  his  men  a  blanket 


io6  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

an'  a  quarter  of  a  ton  o'  coal  at  Christmas.  A 
blanket,  and  a  quarter  of  a  ton  o'  coal  !  Pity  as  some- 
body hadn't  shoved  a  brick  down  his  throat,  when  he 
had  got  'n  open,  so's  to  keep  'n  open  !"  The  senti- 
ment sounds  envious,  but  in  fact  it  was  scornfuL 
It  was  directed,  not  against  the  great  man's  riches, 
but  against  the  well-known  meanness  he  displayed 
anew  in  his  contemptible  gifts. 

A  faint  trace  of  traditional  class  animosity  sounds 
in  one  or  two  customary  phrases  of  the  village,  for 
instance  in  the  saying  that  there  is  one  law  for  the 
rich  and  another  for  the  poor.     Yet  this  has  become 
such  a  by-word  as  to  be  usually  stated  with  a  smile  ; 
for  is  it  not  an  old  acquaintance  amongst  opinions  ? 
The  older  people  even  have  a  humorous  develop- 
ment of  it.     According  to  their  improved  version, 
there  are  not  two  only,  but  three  kinds  of  law  :  one 
kind  for  the  rich,  one  for  the  poor,  and  one  "  the 
law  that  nobody  can't  make."     What  is  this  last  ? 
Why,  the  law  "  to  make  a  feller  pay  what  en't  got 
nothink."     By  such  witticisms  the  edge  of  bitter- 
ness is  turned  ;  the  sting  is  taken  out  of  that  sense 
of  inequality  which,  as  the  labourer  probably  knows, 
would  poison  his  present  comfort  and  lead  him  into 
dangerous  courses  if  he  let   it  rankle.     With  one 
exception,  the  angriest  recognition  of  class  differ- 
ences which  I  have  come  across  amongst  the  villagers 
was  when  I  passed  two  women  on  their  way  home 
from  the  town,  where,  I  surmised,  they,  or  some 
friend  of  theirs,  had  just  been  fined  at  the  County 


GOOD  TEMPER  107 

Court    or    the    Petty    Sessions.     "  Ah  !"     one    was 
saying,    with   spiteful   emphasis,    "  there  II   come   a 
great  day  for  they  to  have  their  Judge,  same  as  we 
poor  people."     Yet  even  there,  if  the  emotion  was 
newly-kindled,  the  sentiment  was  too  antiquated  to 
mean  much.     For  it  is  a  very  ancient  idea — that  of 
getting  even  with  one's  enemies  in  the  next  world 
instead  of  in  this.     So  long  as  the  poor  can  console 
themselves  by  leaving  it  to  Providence  to  avenge 
them  at  the  Day  of  Judgment,  it  cannot  be  said  that 
there  is  any  virulent  class-feeling  amongst  them. 
The  most  that  you  can  make  of  it  is  that  they 
occasionally  feel  spiteful.     It  happened,  in  this  case, 
to  be  against  rich  people  that  those  two  women 
felt  their  momentary  grudge  ;  but  it  was  hardly  felt 
against  the  rich  as  a  class  ;  and  if  the  same  kind  of 
offence  had  come  from  some  neighbour,  they  would 
have  said  much  the  same  kind  of  thing.     In  the 
family  disputes  which  occur  now  and  then  over  the 
inheritance  of  a    lew  pounds'  worth  of   property, 
the  losers  put  on  a  very  disinterested  and  superior 
look,  and  say  piously  of  the  gainers  :  "  Ah,  they'll" 
never  prosper  !     They  can't  prosper  !" 

The  exceptional  case  alluded  to  above  was  cer- 
tainly startling.  I  was  talking  to  an  old  man  whom 
I  had  long  known  :  a  little  wrinkled  old  man, 
deservedly  esteemed  for  his  integrity  and  industry, 
full  of  experience  as  well  as  of  old-world  notions 
sometimes  a  little  "  grumpy,"  a  little  caustic  in  his 
manner  of  talking,  but  on  the  whole  quite  kindly 


io8  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

and  tolerant  in  his  disposition.     You  could  often 
watch  in  his  face  the  habitual  practice  of  patience, 
as,  with  a  wry  smile  and  a  contemptuous  remark, 
he  dismissed  some  disagreeable  topic  or  other  from 
his  thoughts.     He  had  come  down  in  the  world. 
His  father's  cottage,  already  mortgaged  when  he 
inherited  it,  had  been  sold  over  his  head  after  the 
death  of  the  mortgagee,  so  that  thenceforth  he  was 
on  no  better  footing  than  any  other  of  the  labourers. 
Gradually,  as  the  demand  failed  for  his  old-fashioned 
forms  of  skill — thatching,  mowing,  and  so  on — his 
position  became  more  and  more  precarious  ;  yet  he 
remained  good-tempered,  in  his  queer  acid  way,  until 
he    was    past    seventy    years    old.     That    evening, 
when  he  startled  me,  he  had  been  telling  of  his  day's 
work  as  a  road-mender,  and  he  was  mightily  philo- 
sophical over  the  prospect  of  having  to  give  up  even 
that  last  form  of  regular  employment,  because  of 
the  exposure  and   the  miles  of  walking  which   it 
entailed.     Nobody  could  have  thought  him  a  vin- 
dictive  or   even   a  discontented  man  so    far.     By 
chance,   however,    something   was   said   about   the 
uncultivated  land  in  the  neighbourhood,  covered  as 
it  is  with  fir-woods  now  ;  and  at  that  he  suddenly 
fired  up.     Pointing  to  the  woods,  which  could  be 
seen  beyond  the  valley,  he  said  spitefully,  while  his 
eyes  blazed  :  "  I  can  remember  when  all  that  was 
open  common,  and  you  could  go  where  you  mind  to. 
Now  'tis  all  fenced  in,  and  if  you  looks  over  the  fence 
they'll  lock  ye  up.     And  they  en't  got  no  more  right 


GOOD  TEMPER  109 

to  it,  Mr.  Bourne,  than  you  and  me  have  !  I  should 
like  to  see  they  woods  all  go  up  in  flames  !" 

That  was  years  ago.  The  woods  are  flourishing  ; 
the  old  man  is  past  doing  any  mischief  ;  but  I  re- 
member his  indignation.  And  it  was  the  sole  case 
I  have  met  with  in  the  parish,  of  animosity  har- 
boured not  so  much  against  persons  as  against  the 
existing  position  of  things.  This  one  man  was  alive 
to  the  injustice  of  a  social  arrangement  ;  and  in  that 
respect  he  differed  from  the  rest  of  my  neighbours, 
unless  I  am  much  deceived  in  them.  Of  course 
there  may  be  more  of  envious  feeling  abroad  in  the 
village  than  I  know  about.  It  is  the  sort  of  thing 
that  would  keep  itself  secret  ;  and  perhaps  this  old 
man's  contemporaries,  who  shared  his  recollections, 
silently  shared  his  bitterness  too.  But  if  so,  I  do 
not  believe  that  they  have  passed  the  feeling  on  to 
their  children.  The  impression  is  strong  in  me  that 
the  people  have  never  learnt  to  look  upon  the 
distribution  of  property,  which  has  left  them  so 
impoverished,  as  anything  other  than  an  inevitable 
dispensation  of  Providence.  If  they  thought  other- 
wise, at  any  rate  if  the  contrary  view  were  at  all 
prevalent  amongst  them,  they  must  be  most  gifted 
hypocrites,  to  go  about  with  the  good  temper  in 
their  eyes  and  the  cheerfulness  in  their  voices  that 
I  have  been  describing. 

To  what  should  it  be  attributed — this  power  of 
facing  poverty  with  contentment  ?  To  some  extent 
doubtless  it  rests  on  Christian  teaching,  although 


no  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

perhaps  not  much  on  the  Christian  teaching  of 
the  present  day.  Present-day  religion,  indeed,  must 
often  seem  to  the  cottagers  a  tiresome  hobby  re- 
served to  the  well-to-do  ;  but  from  distant  genera- 
tions there  seems  to  have  come  down,  in  many  a 
cottage  family,  a  rather  lofty  religious  sentiment 
which  fosters  honesty,  patience,  resignation,  courage. 
Much  of  the  gravity,  much  of  the  tranquillity  of 
soul  of  the  more  sedate  villagers  must  be  ascribed 
to  this  traditional  influence,  whose  effects  are 
attractive  enough,  in  the  character  and  outlook  of 
many  an  old  cottage  man  and  woman. 

Yet  there  is  much  more  in  the  village  temper  than 
can  be  accounted  for  by  this  cause  alone.  In  most 
of  the  people  the  cheerfulness  does  not  suggest  pious 
resignation,  in  the  hope  of  the  next  world  ;  it  looks 
like  a  grim  and  lusty  determination  to  make  the  best 
of  this  world.  It  is  contemptuous,  or  laughing. 
As  I  have  shown,  it  has  a  tendency  to  be  beery. 
It  occasionally  breaks  out  into  disorder.  In  fact, 
if  the  folk  were  not  habitually  overworked  they 
would  be  boisterous,  jolly.  Of  course  it  may  all 
proceed  from  the  strong  English  nature  in  them  ;  and 
in  that  case  we  need  seek  no  other  explanation  of  it. 
Yet  if  one  influence,  namely,  a  traditional  Chris- 
tianity, is  to  be  credited — as  it  certainly  should 
be — with  an  effect  upon  the  village  character  in  one 
direction,  then  probably,  behind  this  other  effect 
in  another  direction,  some  other  influence  is  at 
work.     And  for  my  part   I  make  no  doubt  of  it. 


GOOD  TEMPER  m 

The  cheerfulness  of  the  cottagers  rests  largely  upon 
a  survival  of  the  outlook  and  habits  of  the  peasant 
days  before  the  common  was  enclosed.  It  is  not  a 
negative  quality.  My  neighbours  are  not  merely 
patient  and  loftily  resigned  to  distress  ;  they  are  still 
groping,  dimly,  for  an  enjoyment  of  life  which  they 
have  not  yet  realized  to  be  unattainable.  They 
maintain  the  peasant  spirits.  Observe,  I  do  not 
suggest  that  they  are  intentionally  old-fashioned. 
I  do  not  believe  them  to  be  sympathetic  at  all  to 
those  self-conscious  revivals  of  peasant  arts  which 
are  now  being  recommended  to  the  poor  by  a  certain 
type  of  philanthropists.  They  make  no  aesthetic 
choice.  They  do  not  deliberate  which  of  the 
ancestral  customs  it  would  be  "  nice  "  for  them  to 
follow  ;  but,  other  things  being  equal,  they  incline 
to  go  on  in  the  way  that  has  been  usual  in  their 
families.  It  is  a  tendency  that  sways  them,  not  a 
thought-out  scheme  of  the  way  to  live.  Now  and 
again,  perhaps,  some  memory  may  strengthen  the 
tendency,  as  they  are  reminded  of  this  or  that  fine 
old  personality  worthy  of  imitation,  or  as  some 
circumstance  of  childhood  is  recalled,  which  it  would 
be  pleasant  to  restore  ;  but  in  the  main  the  force 
which  bears  them  on  is  a  traditional  outlook,  fifty 
times  more  potent  than  definite  but  transient 
memories.  This  it  is  that  has  to  be  recognized  in 
my  neighbours.  Down  in  their  valley,  until  the 
"  residents  "  began  to  flock  in,  the  old  style  of 
thinking    lingered    on  ;    in    the    little    cottages   the 


112  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

people,  from  earliest  infancy,  were  accustomed  to 
hear  all  things — persons  and  manners,  houses  and 
gardens,  and  the  day's  work — appraised  by  an  an- 
cient standard  of  the  countryside ;  and  consequently 
it  happens  that  this  evening  while  I  am  writing,  out 
there  on  the  slopes  of  the  valley  the  men  and  women, 
and  the  very  children  whose  voices  I  can  just  hear, 
are  living  by  an  outlook  in  which  the  values  are 
different  from  those  of  easy-going  people,  and  in 
which,  especially,  hardships  have  never  been  met 
by  peevishness,  but  have  been  beaten  by  good- 
humour. 


Ill 

THE  ALTERED  CIRCUMSTANCES 


ii3 


VIII 

THE  PEASANT  SYSTEM 

The  persistence  into  the  twentieth  century — the 
scarcely  realized  persistence — not  so  much  of  any 
definite  ideas,  as  of  a  general  temper  more  proper 
to  the  eighteenth  century,  accounts  for  all  sorts  of 
anomalies  in  the  village,  and  explains  not  only  why 
other  people  do  not  understand  the  position  of  its 
inhabitants  to-day,  but  why  they  themselves  largely 
fail  to  understand  it.  They  are  not  fully  aware  of 
being  behind  the  times,  and  probably  in  m.any 
respects  they  no  longer  are  so  ;  only  there  is  that 
queer  mental  attitude  giving  its  bias  to  their  view 
of  life.  Although  very  feebly  now,  still  the  momen- 
tum derived  from  a  forgotten  cult  carries  them  on. 

But,  having  noticed  the  persistence  of  the  peasant 
traditions,  we  have  next  to  notice  how  inadequate 
they  are  to  present  needs.  Our  subject  swings  round 
here.  Inasmuch  as  the  peasant  outlook  lingers  on 
in  the  valley,  it  explains  many  of  those  peculiarities 
I  have  described  in  earlier  chapters  ;  but,  inasmuch 
as  it  is  a  decayed  and  all  but  useless  outlook,  we 
shall  see  in  its  decay  the  significance  of  those  changes 
in  the  village  which  have  now  to  be  traced  out.     The 

115 


ii6  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

little  that  is  left  from  the  old  days  has  an  anti- 
quarian or  a  gossipy  sort  of  interest  ;  but  the  lack 
of  the  great  deal  that  has  gone  gives  rise  to  some 
most  serious  problems. 

For,  as  I  hinted  at  the  outset,  the  "  peasant  " 
tradition  in  its  vigour  amounted  to  nothing  less 
than  a  form  of  civilization — the  home-made  civiliza- 
tion of  the  rural  English.  To  the  exigent  problems 
of  life  it  furnished  solutions  of  its  own — different 
solutions,  certainly,  from  those  which  modern 
civilization  gives,  but  yet  serviceable  enough. 
People  could  find  in  it  not  only  a  method  of  getting 
a  living,  but  also  an  encouragement  and  a  help  to 
live  well.  Besides  employment  there  was  an  intense 
juterest  for  them  in  the  country  customs.  There 
was  scope  for  modest  ambition  too.  Best  of  all, 
those  customs  provided  a  rough  guidance  as  to 
conduct — an  unwritten  code  to  which,  though  we 
forget  it,  England  owes  much.  It  seems  singular 
to  think  of  now  ;  but  the  very  labourer  might  reason- 
abl}^  hope  for  some  satisfaction  in  life,  nor  trouble 
about  "  raising  "  himself  into  some  other  class,  so 
long  as  he  could  live  on  peasant  lines.  And  it  is  in 
the  virtual  disappearance  of  this  civilization  that 
the  main  change  in  the  village  consists.  Other 
changes  are  comparatively  immaterial.  The  valley 
might  have  been  invaded  by  the  leisured  classes  ; 
its  old  appearance  might  have  been  altered  ;  all 
sorts  of  new-fangled  things  might  have  been  intro- 
duced into  it  ;  and  still  under  the  surface  it  would 


THE  PEASANT  SYSTEM  117 

have  retained  the  essential  village  characteristics, 
had  but  the  peasant  tradition  been  preserved  in  its 
integrity  amongst  the  lowlier  people  ;  but  with  that 
dying,  the  village,  too,  dies  where  it  stands.  And 
that  is  what  has  been  happening  here.  A  faint 
influence  from  out  of  the  past  still  has  its  feeble 
effect  ;  but,  in  this  corner  of  England  at  least,  what 
we  used  to  think  of  as  the  rural  English  are,  as  it 
were,  vanishing  away — vanishing  as  in  a  slow 
transformation,  not  by  death  or  emigration,  not 
even  by  essential  change  of  personnel,  but  by  be- 
coming somehow  different  in  their  outlook  and 
habits.  The  old  families  continue  in  their  old  home  ; 
but  they  begin  to  be  a  new  people. 

It  was  of  the  essence  of  the  old  system  that  those 
living  under  it  subsisted  in  the  main  upon  what 
their  own  industry  could  produce  out  of  the  soil 
and  materials  of  their  own  countryside.  A  few 
things,  certainly,  they  might  get  from  other  neigh- 
bourhoods, such  as  iron  for  making  their  tools,  and 
salt  for  curing  their  bacon ;  and  some  small  inter- 
change of  commodities  there  was,  accordingly,  say 
between  the  various  districts  that  yielded  cheese, 
and  wool,  and  hops,  and  charcoal ;  but  as  a  general 
thing  the  parish  where  the  peasant  people  lived 
was  the  source  of  the  materials  they  used,  and 
their  wellbeing  depended  on  their  knowledge  of  its 
resources.  Amongst  themselves  they  would  number 
a  few  special  craftsmen — a  smith,  a  carpenter  or 
wheelwright,  a  shoemaker,  a  pair  of  sawyers,  and 


ii8  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

so  on  ;  yet  the  trades  of  these  speciaHsts  were  only 
ancillary  to  the  general  handiness  of  the  people,  who 
with  their  own  hands  raised  and  harvested  their 
crops,  made  their  clothes,  did  much  of  the  building 
of  their  homes,  attended  to  their  cattle,  thatched 
their  ricks,  cut  their  firing,  made  their  bread  and 
wine  or  cider,  pruned  their  fruit-trees  and  vines, 
looked  after  their  bees,  all  for  themselves.  And 
some  at  least,  and  perhaps  the  most,  of  these 
economies  were  open  to  the  poorest  labourer. 
Though  he  owned  no  land,  yet  as  the  tenant,  and 
probably  the  permanent  tenant,  of  a  cottage  and 
garden  he  had  the  chance  to  occupy  himself  in 
many  a  craft  that  tended  to  his  own  comfort.  A 
careful  man  and  wife  needed  not  to  despair  of 
becoming  rich  in  the  possession  of  a  cow  or  a  pig 
or  two,  and  of  good  clothes  and  household  utensils  ; 
and  they  might  well  expect  to  see  their  children 
grow  up  strong  and  prosperous  in  the  peasant  way. 
Thus  the  claim  that  I  have  made  for  the  peasant 
tradition — namely,  that  it  permitted  a  man  to  hope 
for  well-being  without  seeking  to  escape  from  his 
own  class  into  some  other — is  justified,  partially  at 
least.  I  admit  that  the  ambition  was  a  modest 
one,  but  there  were  circumstances  attending  it  to 
make  it  a  truly  comforting  one  too.  Look  once  more 
at  the  conditions.  The  small  owners  of  the  parish 
might  occupy  more  land  than  the  labourers,  and 
have  the  command  of  horses  and  waggons,  and 
ploughs  and  barns,  and  so  on  ;  but  they  ate  the 


THE  PEASANT  SYSTEM  119 

same  sort  of  food  and  wore  the  same  sort  of  clothes 
as  the  poorer  folk,  and  they  thought  the  same 
thoughts  too,  and  talked  in  the  same  dialect,  so  that 
the  labourer  working  for  them  was  not  oppressed 
by  any  sense  of  personal  inferiority.  He  might 
even  excel  in  some  directions,  and  be  valued  for  his 
excellence.  Hence,  if  his  ambition  was  small,  the 
need  for  it  was  not  very  great. 

And  then,  this  life  of  manifold  industry  was 
interesting  to  live.  It  is  impossible  to  doubt  it. 
Not  one  of  the  pursuits  I  have  mentioned  failed  to 
make  its  pleasant  demand  on  the  labourer  for  skill 
and  knowledge ;  so  that  after  his  day's  wage- 
earning  he  turned  to  his  wine-making  or  the  manage- 
ment of  his  pigs  with  the  zest  that  men  put  into 
their  hobbies.  Amateurs  the  people  were  of  their 
homely  crafts — very  clever  amateurs,  too,  some  of 
them.  I  think  it  likely,  also,  that  normally  even 
wage-earning  labour  went  as  it  were  to  a  peaceful 
tune.  In  the  elaborate  tile-work  of  old  cottage 
roofs,  in  the  decorated  ironwork  of  decrepit  farm- 
waggons,  in  the  carefully  fashioned  field-gates — to 
name  but  a  few  relics  of  the  sort — many  a  village 
of  Surrey  and  Hampshire  and  Sussex  has  ample 
proofs  that  at  least  the  artisans  of  old  time  went 
about  their  work  placidly,  unhurriedly,  taking  time 
to  make  their  products  comely.  And  probably  the 
same  peaceful  conditions  extended  to  the  labouring 
folk.  Of  course,  their  ploughing  and  harvesting 
have  left  no  traces  ;  but  there  is  much  suggestive- 


120  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

ness  in  some  little  things  one  may  note,  such  as  the 
friendly  behaviour  of  carter-men  to  their  horses, 
and  the  accomplished  finish  given  to  the  thatch  of 
ricks,  and  the  endearing  names  which  people  in 
out-of-the-way  places  still  bestow  upon  their  cows. 
Quietly,  but  convincingly,  such  things  tell  their  tale 
of  tranquillity,  for  they  cannot  have  originated 
amongst  a  people  habitually  unhappy  and  harassed. 
But  whether  the  day's  work  went  comfortably  or 
no,  certainly  the  people's  own  home-work — to  turn 
to  that  again — must  often  have  been  agreeable,  and 
sometimes  delightful.  The  cottage  crafts  were  not 
all  strictly  useful ;  some  had  simple  aesthetic  ends. 
If  you  doubt  it,  look  merely  at  the  clipped  hedges 
of  box  and  yew  in  the  older  gardens  ;  they  are  the 
result  of  long  and  loving  care,  but  they  serve  no 
particular  end,  save  to  please  the  eye.  So,  too,  in 
general,  if  you  think  that  the  folk  of  old  were 
inappreciative  of  beauty,  you  have  but  to  listen  to 
their  names  of  flowers — sweet-william,  hearts-ease, 
marigold,  meadow-sweet,  night-shade — for  proof 
that  English  peasant-life  had  its  graceful  side. 

Still,  their  useful  work  must,  after  all,  have  been 
the  mainstay  of  the  villagers  ;  and  how  thoroughly 
their  spirits  were  immersed  in  it  I  suppose  few  living 
people  will  ever  be  able  to  realize.  For  my  part,  I 
dare  not  pretend  to  comprehend  it  ;  only  at  times 
I  can  vaguely  feel  what  the  peasant's  attitude  must 
have  been.  All  the  things  of  the  countryside  had 
an  intimate  bearing  upon  his  own  fate  ;  he  was  not 


THE  PEASANT  SYSTEM  121 

there  to  admire  them,  but  to  live  by  them — or,  say, 
to  wrest  his  living  from  them  by  familiar  knowledge 
of  their  properties.  From  long  experience — ex- 
perience older  than  his  own,  and  traditional  amongst 
his  people — he  knew  the  soil  of  the  fields  and  its 
variations  almost  foot  by  foot  ;  he  understood  the 
springs  and  streams  ;  hedgerow  and  ditch  explained 
themselves  to  him  ;  the  coppices  and  woods,  the 
water-meadows  and  the  windy  heaths,  the  local 
chalk  and  clay  and  stone,  all  had  a  place  in  his 
regard — reminded  him  of  the  crafts  of  his  people, 
spoke  to  him  of  the  economies  of  his  own  cottage 
life  ;  so  that  the  turfs  or  the  faggots  or  the  timber 
he  handled  when  at  home  called  his  fancy,  while  he 
was  handling  them,  to  the  landscape  they  came 
from.  Of  the  intimacy  of  this  knowledge,  in  minute 
details,  it  is  impossible  to  give  an  idea.  I  am 
assured  of  its  existence  because  I  have  come  across 
surviving  examples  of  it,  but  I  may  not  begin  to 
describe  it.  One  may,  however,  imagine  dimly 
what  the  cumulative  effect  of  it  must  have  been  on 
the  peasant's  outlook  ;  how  attached  he  must  have 
grown — I  mean  how  closely  linked — to  his  own 
countryside.  He  did  not  merely  "  reside  "  in  it  ; 
he  was  part  of  it,  and  it  was  part  of  him.  He  fitted 
into  it  as  one  of  its  native  denizens,  like  the  hedge- 
hogs and  the  thrushes.  All  that  happened  to  it 
mattered  to  him.  He  learnt  to  look  with  reverence 
upon  its  main  features,  and  would  not  willingly 
interfere  with  their  disposition.     But  I  lose  the  best 


122  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

point  in  talking  of  the  individual  peasant ;  these 
things  should  rather  be  said  of  the  tribe — the  little 
group  of  folk — of  which  he  was  a  member.  As 
they,  in  their  successive  generations,  were  the 
denizens  of  their  little  patch  of  England — its  human 
fauna — so  it  was  with  traditional  feelings  derived 
from  their  continuance  in  the  land  that  the  individual 
peasant  man  or  woman  looked  at  the  fields  and  the 
woods. 

Out  of  all  these  circumstances — the  pride  of  skill 
in  handicrafts,  the  detailed  understanding  of  the 
soil  and  its  materials,  the  general  effect  of  the  well- 
known  landscape,  and  the  faint  sense  of  something 
venerable  in  its  associations — out  of  all  this  there 
proceeded  an  influence  which  acted  upon  the  village 
people  as  an  unperceived  guide  to  their  conduct, 
so  that  they  observed  the  seasons  proper  for  their 
varied  pursuits  almost  as  if  they  were  going  through 
some  ritual.  Thus,  for  instance,  in  this  parish, 
when,  on  an  auspicious  evening  of  spring,  a  man 
and  wife  went  out  far  across  the  common  to  get 
rushes  for  the  wife's  hop-tying,  of  course  it  was 
a  consideration  of  thrift  that  sent  them  off ;  but  an 
idea  of  doing  the  right  piece  of  country  routine  at 
the  right  time  gave  value  to  the  little  expedition. 
The  moment,  the  evening,  became  enriched  by  sug- 
gestion of  the  seasons  into  which  it  fitted,  and  by 
memories  of  years  gone  by.  Similarly  in  managing 
the  garden  crops :  to  be  too  late,  to  neglect  the  well- 
known  signs  which  hinted  at  what  should  be  done, 


THE  PEASANT  SYSTEM  123 

was  more  than  bad  economy  ;  it  was  dereliction  of 
peasant  duty.  And  thus  the  succession  of  recurring 
tasks,  each  one  of  which  seemed  to  the  villager 
almost  characteristic  of  his  own  people  in  their 
native  home,  kept  constantly  alive  a  feeling  that 
satisfied  him  and  a  usage  that  helped  him.  The 
feeling  was  that  he  belonged  to  a  set  of  people  rather 
apart  from  the  rest  of  the  world — a  people  neces- 
sarily different  from  others  in  their  manners,  and 
perhaps  poorer  and  ruder  than  most,  but  yet  fully 
entitled  to  respect  and  consideration.  The  usage 
was  just  the  whole  series  or  body  of  customs  to 
which  his  own  people  conformed  ;  or,  more  exactly, 
the  accepted  idea  in  the  village  of  what  ought  to  be 
done  in  any  contingency,  and  of  the  proper  way  to 
do  it.  In  short,  it  was  that  unwritten  code  I  spoke 
of  just  now — a  sort  of  savoir  vivre — which  became 
part  of  the  rural  labourer's  outlook,  and  instructed 
him  through  his  days  and  years.  It  was  hardly 
reduced  to  thoughts  in  his  consciousness,  but  it 
always  swayed  him.  And  it  was  consistent  with — 
nay,  it  implied — many  strong  virtues  :  toughness 
to  endure  long  labour,  handiness,  frugality,  habits 
of  early  rising.  It  was  consistent  too — that  must 
be  admitted — with  considerable  hardness  and 
"  coarseness  "  of  feeling  ;  a  man  might  be  avaricious, 
loose,  dirty,  quarrelsome,  and  not  offend  much 
against  the  essential  peasant  code.  Nor  was  its 
influence  very  good  upon  his  intellectual  develop- 
ment, as  I  shall  show  later  on.     Yet  whatever  its 


124  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

defects,  it  had  those  quahties  which  I  have  tried  to 
outhne  ;  and  where  it  really  flourished  it  ultimately 
led  to  gracefulness  of  living  and  love  of  what  is  comely 
and  kindly.  You  can  detect  as  much  still,  in  the 
flavour  of  many  a  mellow  folk-saying,  not  to  mention 
folk-song  ;  you  may  divine  it  yet  in  all  kinds  of  little 
popular  traits,  if  once  you  know  what  to  look  for. 

In  this  particular  valley,  where  the  barren  soil 
challenged  the  people  to  a  severer  struggle  for  bare 
subsistence,  the  tradition  could  not  put  forth  its 
fairer,  its  gentler,  features  ;  nevertheless  the  back- 
bone of  the  village  life  was  of  the  genuine  peasant 
order.  The  cottagers  had  to  "  rough  it,"  to  dis- 
pense with  softness,  to  put  up  with  ugliness  ;  but  by 
their  own  skill  and  knowledge  they  forced  the  main 
part  of  their  living  out  of  the  soil  and  materials  of 
their  own  neighbourhood.  And  in  doing  this  they 
won  at  least  the  rougher  consolations  which  that 
mode  of  life  had  to  offer.  Their  local  knowledge  was 
intensely  interesting  to  them  ;  they  took  pride  in 
their  skill  and  hardihood  ;  they  felt  that  they  be- 
longed to  a  set  of  people  not  inferior  to  others, 
albeit  perhaps  poorer  and  ruder  ;  and  all  the  customs 
which  their  situation  required  them  to  follow  sus- 
tained their  belief  in  the  ancestral  notions  of  good 
and  evil.  In  other  words,  they  had  a  civilization 
to  support  them — a  poor  thing,  perhaps,  a  poor  kind 
of  civilization,  but  their  own,  and  entirely  within  the 
reach  of  them  all.  I  have  no  hesitation  in  affirming 
all  this  ;  because,  though  I  never  saw  the  system  in 


THE  PEASANT  SYSTEM  125 

its  completeness,  I  came  here  soon  enough  to  find 
a  few  old  people  still  partially  living  by  it.  These 
old  people,  fortunate  in  the  possession  of  their  own 
cottages  and  a  little  land,  were  keepers  of  pigs  and 
donkeys,  and  even  a  few  cows.  They  kept  bees, 
too  ;  they  made  wine  ;  they  often  paid  in  kind  for 
any  services  that  neighbours  did  for  them  ;  and 
with  the  food  they  could  grow,  and  the  firing  they 
could  still  obtain  from  the  woods  and  heath,  their 
living  was  half  provided  for.  The  one  of  them  I 
knew  best  was  not  the  most  typical.  Shrewd  old 
man  that  he  was,  he  had  adapted  himself  so  far  as 
suited  him  to  a  more  commercial  economy,  and  had 
grown  suspicious  and  avaricious  ;  yet  if  he  could 
have  been  translated  suddenly  back  into  the 
eighteenth  century,  he  would  scarce  have  needed 
to  change  any  of  his  habits,  or  even  his  clothes. 
He  wore  an  old-fashioned  "  smock  frock,"  doubtless 
home-made  ;  and  in  this  he  pottered  about  all  day — 
pottered,  at  least,  in  his  old  age,  when  I  knew  him — 
not  very  spruce  as  to  personal  cleanliness,  smelling 
of  his  cow-stall,  saving  money,  wanting  no  holiday, 
independent  of  books  and  newspapers,  indifferent 
to  anything  that  happened  fartlier  off  than  the  neigh- 
bouring town,  liking  his  pipe  and  glass  of  beer,  and 
never  knowing  what  it  was  to  feel  dull.  I  speak  of 
him  because  I  knew  him  personally  ;  but  there  were 
others  of  whom  I  used  to  hear,  though  I  never  became 
acquainted  with  them,  who  seem  to  have  been 
hardly  at   all  tainted  with  the  commercial  spirit, 


126  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

and  were  more  in  the  position  of  labourers  than  this 
man,  yet  lived  almost  dignified  lives  of  simple  and 
self-supporting  contentment.  Of  some  of  them  the 
middle-aged  people  of  to-day  still  talk,  not  without 
respect. 

But  in  writing  of  such  folk  I  have  most  em- 
phatically to  use  the  past  tense  ;  for  although  a 
sort  of  afterglow  from  the  old  civilization  still  rests 
upon  the  village  character,  it  is  fast  fading  out,  and 
it  has  not  much  resemblance  to  the  genuine  thing  of 
half  a  century  ago.  The  direct  light  has  gone  out 
of  the  people's  life — the  light,  the  meaning,  the 
guidance.  They  have  no  longer  a  civilization,  but 
only  some  derelict  habits  left  from  that  which  has 
gone.  And  it  is  no  wonder  if  some  of  those  habits 
seem  now  stupid,  ignorant,  objectionable  ;  for  the 
fitness  has  departed  from  them,  and  left  them 
naked.  They  were  acquired  under  a  different  set 
of  circumstances — a  set  of  circumstances  whose  dis- 
appearance dates  from,  and  was  caused  by,  the 
enclosure  of  the  common. 


IX 

THE  NEW  THRIFT 

One  usually  thinks  of  the  enclosure  of  a  common  as 
a  procedure  which  takes  effect  immediately,  in 
striking  and  memorable  change  ;  yet  the  event  in 
this  village  seems  to  have  made  no  lasting  impres- 
sion on  people's  minds.  The  older  folk  talk  about 
things  that  happened  "  before  the  common  was 
enclosed  "  much  as  they  might  say  "  before  the 
flood,"  and  occasionally  they  discuss  the  history  of 
some  allotment  or  other  made  under  the  award  ; 
but  one  hears  little  from  them  to  suggest  that  the 
fateful  ordinance  seemed  to  them  a  fateful  one  at 
the  time. 

It  may  be  that  the  stoical  village  temper  is  in  part 
accountable  for  this  indifference.  As  the  arrange- 
ment was  presumably  made  over  the  heads  of  the 
people,  they  doubtless  took  it  in  a  fatalistic  way  as 
a  thing  that  could  not  be  helped  and  had  better  be 
dismissed  from  their  thoughts.  Were  this  all,  how- 
ever, I  think  that  I  should  have  heard  more  of  the 
matter.  Had  sudden  distress  fallen  upon  the  valley, 
had  families  been  speedily  and  obviously  ruined  by 
the   enclosure,    some   mention   of   the   fact    would 

127 


128  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

surely  have  reached  me.  But  the  truth  appears  to 
be  that  nothing  very  definite  or  striking  ensued,  to 
be  remembered.  The  change  was  hardly  under- 
stood, or,  at  any  rate,  its  importance  was  not 
appreciated,  by  the  people  concerned. 

Perhaps,  indeed,  its  calamitous  nature  was  veiled 
at  first  behind  some  small  temporary  advantages 
which  sprang  from  it.  True,  I  question  if  the 
benefits  experienced  here  were  equal  to  those  which 
are  said  to  have  been  realized  in  similar  circum- 
stances elsewhere.  In  other  parishes,  where  the 
farmers  have  been  impoverished  and  the  labourers 
out  of  work,  the  latter,  at  the  enclosure  of  a  common, 
have  sometimes  found  welcome  emplo5mient  in 
digging  out  or  fencing  in  the  boundaries  of  the  new 
allotments,  and  in  breaking  up  the  fresh  ground. 
So  the  landowners  say.  But  here,  where  there  were 
few  men  wanting  constant  labour,  the  opportunity 
of  work  to  do  was  hardly  called  for,  and  the  making 
of  boundaries  was  in  many  cases  neglected.  In  that 
one  way,  therefore,  not  many  can  have  derived 
any  profit  from  the  enclosure.  On  the  other  hand, 
an  advantage  was  really  felt,  I  think,  in  the  opening 
that  arose  for  building  cottages  on  the  newly- 
acquired  freeholds.  Quite  a  number  of  cottages 
seem  to  date  from  that  period  ;  and  I  infer  that  the 
opportunity  was  seized  by  various  men  who  wished 
to  provide  new  house-room  for  themselves,  or  for 
a  married  son  or  daughter.  They  could  still  go  to 
work  almost  on  the  old  lines.     Perhaps  the  recog- 


THE  NEW  THRIFT  129 

nized  price — seventy  pounds,  it  is  said  to  have  been, 
for  building  a  cottage  of  three  rooms — would  have 
to  be  exceeded  a  little,  when  timbers  for  floor  and 
roof  could  no  longer  be  had  for  the  cutting  out  of 
fir-trees  on  the  common  ;  and  yet  there,  after  all, 
were  the  trees,  inexpensive  to  buy  ;  and  there  was 
the  peasant  tradition,  still  unimpaired,  to  en- 
courage and  commend  such  enterprise. 

There  is  really  little  need,  however,  for  these  ex- 
planations of  the  people's  unconcern  at  the  disaster 
which  had,  in  fact,  befallen  them.     The  passing  of 
the  common  seemed  unimportant  at  the  time,  not 
so  much  because  a  few  short-lived  advantages  con- 
cealed  its  meaning  as  because  the  real  disadvan- 
tages were  slow  to  appear.     At  first  the  enclosure 
was  rather  a  nominal  event  than  an  actual  one.     It 
had  been  made  in  theory  ;  in  practice  it  was  deferred. 
I  have  just  said  that  in  many  cases  the  boundaries 
were  left  unmarked  ;  I  may  add  now  that  to  this 
day  they  have  not  quite  all  been  defined,  although 
the  few  spots  which  remain  unfenced  are  not  worthy 
of  notice.     They  are  to  be  found  only  in  places 
where  building  is  impossible  ;  elsewhere  all  is  now 
closed  in.     For  it  is  the  recent  building  boom  that 
has  at  last  caused  the  enclosure  to  take  its  full  effect. 
Before  that  began,  not  more  than  ten  or  twelve 
years  ago,  there  were  abundant  patches  of  heath 
still  left  open  ;  and  on  many  a  spot  where  nowadays 
the  well-to-do  have  their  tennis  or  their  afternoon 
tea,  of  old  I  have  seen  donkeys  peacefully  grazing. 

9 


130  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

The  donkeys  have  had  to  go,  their  room  being 
wanted,  and  not  many  cottagers  can  keep  a  donkey 
now  ;  but  kept  they  were,  and  in  considerable  num- 
bers, until  these  late  years,  in  spite  of  the  enclosure. 
But  if  the  end  could  be  deferred  so  long,  one  may 
judge  how  slowly  the  change  began — slowly  and 
inconspicuously,  so  that  those  who  saw  the  beginning 
could  almost  ignore  it.  Even  the  cows — once  as 
numerous  as  the  donkeys — were  not  given  up  quite 
immediately,  though  in  a  few  years  they  were  all 
gone,  I  am  told.  But  long  after  them.,  heath  for 
thatching  and  firing  might  still  be  cut  in  waste 
places  ;  fern  continued  until  six  or  seven  years  ago 
to  yield  litter  for  pig-sties  ;  and  since  these  things 
still  seemed  to  go  on  almost  as  well  after  the  en- 
closure as  before  it,  how  should  the  people  have 
imagined  that  their  ancient  mode  of  life  had  been 
cut  off  at  the  roots,  and  that  it  had  really  begun 
to  die  where  it  stood,  under  their  undiscerning  eyes  ? 
Nevertheless,  that  was  the  effect.  To  the  enclosure 
of  the  common  more  than  to  any  other  cause  may 
be  traced  all  the  changes  that  have  subsequently 
passed  over  the  village.  It  was  like  knocking  the 
keystone  out  of  an  arch.  The  keystone  is  not  the 
arch  ;  but,  once  it  is  gone,  all  sorts  of  forces,  pre- 
viously resisted,  begin  to  operate  towards  ruin,  and 
gradually  the  whole  structure  crumbles  down.  This 
fairly  illustrates  what  has  happened  to  the  village, 
in  consequence  of  the  loss  of  the  common.  The 
direct  results  have  been  perhaps  the  least  important 


THE  NEW  THRIFT  131 

in  themselves  ;  but  indirectly  the  enclosure  mattered, 
because  it  left  the  people  helpless  against  influences 
which  have  sapped  away  their  interests,  robbed  them 
of  security  and  peace,  rendered  their  knowledge  and 
skill  of  small  value,  and  seriously  affected  their 
personal  pride  and  their  character.  Observe  it  well. 
The  enclosure  itself,  I  say,  was  not  actually  the 
cause  of  all  this  ;  but  it  was  the  opening,  so  to  speak, 
through  which  all  this  was  let  in.  The  other  causes 
which  have  been  at  work  could  hardly  have  operated 
as  they  have  done  if  the  village  life  had  not  been 
weakened  by  the  changes  directly  due  to  the  loss  of 
the  common. 

They  consisted — those  changes — in  a  radical 
alteration  of  the  domestic  economy  of  the  cottagers. 
Not  suddenly,  but  none  the  less  inevitably,  the  old 
thrift — the  peasant  thrift — which  the  people  under- 
stood thoroughly  had  to  be  abandoned  in  favour 
of  a  modern  thrift — commercial  thrift — which  they 
understood  but  vaguely.  That  was  the  essential 
effect  of  the  enclosure,  the  central  change  directly 
caused  by  it ;  and  it  struck  at  the  very  heart  of  the 
peasant  system. 

For  note  what  it  involved.  By  the  peasant 
system,  as  I  have  already  explained,  people  derived 
the  necessaries  of  life  from  the  materials  and  soil  of 
their  own  countryside.  Now,  so  long  as  they  had 
the  common,  the  inhabitants  of  the  valley  were  in 
a  large  degree  able  to  conform  to  this  system,  the 
common  being,   as  it  were,   a  supplement   to   the 


132  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

cottage  gardens,  and  furnishing  means  of  extending 
the   scope   of   the   little   home   industries.     It   en- 
couraged   the    poorest    labourer    to    practise,    for 
instance,    all    those    time-honoured    crafts    which 
Cobbett,  in  his  little  book  on  Cottage  Economy, 
had  advocated  as  the  one  hope  for  labourers.     The 
cow-keeping,   the   bread-making,    the   fattening   of 
pigs  and  curing  of  bacon,  were  actually  carried  on 
here  thirty  years  after  Cobbett's  time,  besides  other 
things  not  mentioned  by  him,  such  as  turf-cutting 
on  the  heath  and  wheat-growing  in  the  gardens. 
But  it  was  the  common  that  made  all  this  possible. 
It  was  only  by  the  spacious  "  turn-out  "  which  it 
afforded  that  the  people  were  enabled  to  keep  cows 
and  get  milk  and  butter  ;  it  was  only  with  the  turf- 
firing  cut  on  the  common  that  they  could  smoke 
their  bacon,  hanging  it  in  the  wide  chimneys  over 
those  old  open  hearths  where  none  but  such  fuel 
could  be  used  ;  and,  again,  it  was  only  because  they 
could  get  furze  from  the  common  to  heat  their  bread 
ovens  that  it  was  worth  their  while  to  grow  a  little 
wheat  at  home,  and  have  it  ground  into  flour  for 
making  bread.     With  the  common,  however,  they 
could,  and  did,  achieve  all  this.     I  am  not  dealing 
in    supposition.     I   have  mentioned   nothing   here 
that  I  have  not  learnt  from  men  who  remember  the 
feystem  still  flourishing — men  who  in  their  boyhood 
look  part  in  it,  and  can  tell    how  the  turfs  were 
;harvested,  and  how  the  pig-litter  was  got  home  and 
;gtacked  in  ricks  ;  men  who,  if  you  lead  them  on,  will 


THE  NEW  THRIFT  133 

talk  of  the  cows  they  themselves  watched  over  on 
the  heath — two  from  this  cottage,  three  from  that 
one  yonder,  one  more  from  Master  Hack's,  another 
couple  from  Trusler's,  until  they  have  numbered  a 
score,  perhaps,  and  have  named  a  dozen  old  village 
names.  It  all  actually  happened.  The  whole 
system  was  "  in  full  swing  "  here,  within  living 
memory.  But  the  very  heart  of  it  was  the  open 
common. 

Accordingly,  when  the  enclosure  began  to  be  a 
fact,  when  the  cottager  was  left  with  nothing  to 
depend  upon  save  his  garden  alone,  as  a  peasant  he 
was  a  broken  man — a  peasant  shut  out  from  his 
countryside  and  cut  off  from  his  resources.  True, 
he  might  still  grow  vegetables,  and  keep  a  pig  or 
two,  and  provide  himself  with  pork  ;  but  there  was 
little  else  that  he  could  do  in  the  old  way.  It  was 
out  of  the  question  to  obtain  most  of  his  supplies 
by  his  own  handiwork  :  they  had  to  be  procured, 
ready-made,  from  some  other  source.  That  source, 
I  need  hardly  say,  was  a  shop.  So  the  once  self- 
supporting  cottager  turned  into  a  spender  of  money 
at  the  baker's,  the  coal-merchant's,  the  provision- 
dealer's  ;  and,  of  course,  needing  to  spend  money, 
he  needed  first  to  get  it. 

The  change  was  momentous,  as  events  have  suih- 
ciently  proved.  In  the  matter  of  earning,  to  be 
sure,  the  difference  has  appeared  rather  in  the  atti- 
tude of  the  people  than  in  the  actual  method  of 
going  about  to  get  money.     To  a  greater  or  less 


134  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

extent,  most  of  them  were  already  wage-earners, 
though  not  regularly.  If  a  few  had  been  wont  to 
furnish  themselves  with  money  in  true  peasant 
fashion — that  is  to  say,  by  selling  their  goods,  their 
butter,  or  milk,  or  pig-meat,  instead  of  their  labour 
— still,  the  majority  had  wanted  for  their  own  use 
whatever  they  could  produce  in  this  way,  and  had 
been  obliged  to  sell  their  labour  itself,  when  they 
required  money.  Wage-earning,  therefore,  was  no 
new  thing  in  the  village  ;  only,  the  need  to  earn 
became  more  insistent,  when  so  many  more  things 
than  before  had  to  be  bought  with  the  wages. 
Consequently,  it  had  to  be  approached  in  a  more 
businesslike,  a  more  commercial,  spirit.  Unemploy- 
ment, hitherto  not  much  worse  than  a  regrettable 
inconvenience,  became  a  calamity.  Every  hour's 
work  acquired  a  market  value.  The  sense  of  taking 
part  in  time-honoured  duties  of  the  countryside  dis- 
appeared before  the  idea — so  very  important  now — 
of  getting  shillings  with  which  to  go  to  a  shop  ; 
while  even  the  home  industries  which  were  still 
practicable  began  to  be  valued  in  terms  of  money, 
so  that  a  man  was  tempted  to  neglect  his  own  garden- 
ing if  he  could  sell  his  labour  in  somebody  else's 
garden.  Thus  undermined,  the  peasant  outlook 
gave  way,  perforce,  to  that  of  the  modern  labourer, 
and  the  old  attachment  to  the  countryside  was 
weakened.  In  all  this  change  of  attitude,  however, 
we  see  only  one  of  those  indirect  results  of  the  en- 
closure of  the  common  which  were  sooken  of  above. 


THE  NEW  THRIFT  135 

If  the  villagers  became  more  mercenary,  it  was  not 
because  the  fencing  in  of  the  heaths  immediately 
caused  them  to  become  so,  but  because  it  left  them 
helpless  to  resist  becoming  so — left  them  a  prey  to 
considerations  whose  weight  they  had  previously 
not  so  much  felt.  After  all,  the  new  order  of  things 
did  but  intensify  the  need  of  wage-earning  ;  it  made 
no  difference  in  the  procedure  of  it. 

But  in  regard  to  spending  the  case  was  otherwise. 
Under  the  old  regime,  although  probably  a  small 
regular  expenditure  of  money  had  been  usual,  yet 
in  the  main  the  peasant's  expenditure  was  not 
regular,  but  intermittent.  Getting  so  much  food  and 
firing  by  his  own  labour,  he  might  go  for  weeks 
without  needing  more  than  a  few  shillings  to  make 
up  occasional  deficiencies.  His  purse  was  subject 
to  no  such  constant  drain  as  that  for  which  the 
modern  labourer  has  to  provide.  In  short,  the 
regular  expenses  were  small,  the  occasional  ones  not 
crushing.  But  to-day,  when  the  people  can  no 
longer  produce  for  themselves,  the  proportion  has 
changed.  It  has  swung  round  so  completely  that 
nearly  all  the  expenses  have  become  regular,  while 
those  of  the  other  sort  have  wellnigh  disappeared. 
Every  week  money  has  to  be  found,  and  not  only, 
as  of  old,  for  rent,  and  boots,  and  for  some  bread 
and  flour,  but  also  for  butter  or  mo-rgarine,  sugar, 
tea,  bacon  or  foreign  meat  if  possible,  lard,  jam, 
and — in  the  winter,  at  least — coal.  Even  water  is 
an  item  of  weekly  expense  ;    for  where   the   com- 


136  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

pany's  water  is  laid  on  to  a  cottage,  there  is  sixpence 
a  week  or  so  added  to  the  rent.  The  only  important 
thing  which  is  still  not  bought  regularly  is  clothing. 
The  people  get  their  clothes  when  they  can,  and 
when  they  positively  must. 

As  a  result,  the  former  thrift  of  the  village  has 
been  entirely  subverted.     For  earning  and  spending 
are  not  the  whole  of  economy.     There  is  saving  to 
be  considered  ;  and,  in  consequence  of  the  turn-over 
of  expenses  from  the  occasional  to  the  regular  group, 
the  cottagers  have  been  obliged  to  resort  to  methods 
of  saving  specially  adapted  to  the  changed  condi- 
tions.    The  point  is  of  extreme  importance.     Under 
the  old  style,   a  man's  chief  savings  were  in  the 
shape  of  commodities  ready  for  use,  or  growing  into 
use.     They  were,  too,  a  genuine  capital,  inasmuch 
as  they  supported  him  while  he  replaced  and  in- 
creased  them.     The   flitches   of   bacon,    the   little 
stores  of  flour  and  home-made  wine,  the  stack  of 
firing,  the  small  rick  of  fern  or  grass,  were  his  savings- 
bank,  which,  while  he  drew  from  it  daily,  he  re- 
plenished betimes  as  he  planted  his  garden,  and 
brought  home  heath  and  turf  from  the  common, 
and  minded  his  pigs  and  his  cow,  and  put  by  odd 
shillings  for  occasional  need.     Notice  that  putting- 
by  of  shillings.     It  was  not  the  whole,  it  was  only 
the  completion,  of  the  peasant's  thrift.     At  a  pinch 
he  could  even  do  without  the  money,  paying  for 
what  he  wanted  with  a  sack  of  potatoes,  or  a  day's 
work  with  his  donkey-cart  ;  but  a  little  money  put 


THE  NEW  THRIFT  137 

by  was  a  convenience.  When  it  was  wanted,  it  was 
wanted  in  lump  sums — ten  shillings  now,  say,  for 
a  little  pig  ;  and  then  fifteen  shillings  or  so  in  six 
weeks'  time  for  mending  the  donkey-cart,  and  so 
on  ;  and,  thanks  to  the  real  savings  in  the  shape  of 
food  and  firing  ready  for  use,  the  shillings,  however 
come  by,  could  be  hoarded  up. 

But  under  the  new  thrift  they  cannot  be  so 
hoarded  up  ;  nor,  fortunately,  are  the  little  lump 
sums  so  necessary  as  before.  The  real  savings  now, 
the  real  stores  of  useful  capital,  are  no  longer  in  the 
cottager's  home.  They  are  in  shops.  What  the 
modern  labourer  chiefly  requires,  therefore,  is  not 
a  little  hoard  of  money  lying  by,  but  a  regular 
supply  of  money,  a  constant  stream  of  it,  flowing 
in,  to  enable  him  to  go  to  the  shops  regularly.  In 
a  word,  he  wants  an  income — a  steady  income  of 
shillings.  And  since  his  earnings  are  not  steady — 
since  his  income  may  cease  any  day,  and  continue 
in  abeyance  for  weeks  at  a  time,  during  which  the 
shops  will  be  closed  against  him,  his  chief  economy 
is  directed  upon  the  object  of  insuring  his  weekly 
income.  Most  miserably  for  him,  he  has  never  been 
able  to  insure  it  against  all  reverses.  Against  trade 
depression,  which  throws  him  out  of  work  and  dries 
up  the  stream  of  money  that  should  come  flowing 
in,  he  has  no  protection.  He  has  none  if  his  em- 
ployer should  go  bankrupt,  or  leave  the  neighbour- 
hood, and  dismiss  him  ;  none  against  the  competi- 
tion of  machiner5\     Still,  the  labourers  do  as  much 


138  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

as  they  can.  SicknesS;  at  least,  does  not  find  them 
unprepared.  To  cover  loss  of  wages  during  sick- 
ness, they  pay  into  a  benefit  society.  The  more 
careful,  indeed,  pay  into  two — the  Oddfellows  or 
the  Foresters,  or  some  such  society — and  a  local 
"  slate-club."  I  have  known  men  out  of  work  living 
on  tea  and  bread,  and  not  much  of  that,  so  that  they 
may  keep  up  their  club  payments,  and  be  sure  of 
an  income  if  they  should  fall  sick  ;  and  I  have  known 
men  so  circumstanced  immediately  feel  the  advan- 
tage if  sickness  should  actually  fall  upon  them. 

This  is  the  new  thrift,  which  has  replaced  that 
of  the  peasant.  I  do  not  say  that  there  is  no  other 
saving — that  no  little  sums  are  hoarded  up  ;  for,  in 
fact,  I  could  name  one  or  two  men  who,  after  illness 
protracted  to  the  stage  when  sick-pay  from  the 
club  is  reduced,  have  still  fought  off  destitution 
with  the  small  savings  from  better  times.  In  most 
cases,  however,  no  hoarding  is  possible.  The  club 
takes  all  the  spare  money  ;  and  the  club  alone  stands 
between  the  labourer  and  destitution.  And  let  this 
be  clearly  understood.  At  first  it  looks  as  if  the 
member  of  a  club  had  money  invested  in  his  society 
— money  there,  instead  of  perishable  goods  at  home. 
Yet,  in  fact,  that  is  not  the  case.  His  payments  into 
the  club  funds  are  no  investment.  They  bring  him 
no  profit  ;  they  are  not  a  useful  capital  that  can  be 
renewed  with  interest.  At  the  Christm.as  "  share- 
out  "  he  does  get  back  a  part  of  the  twenty-six 
shillings  contributed   to   the  slate-club  during  the 


THE  NEW  THRIFT  139 

year  ;  but  the  two  pounds  a  year  paid  to  the  benefit 
society  are  his  no  longer  ;  they  cannot  be  "  realized  "; 
they  are  gone  beyond  reclaiming.  Though  he  be 
out  of  work  and  his  family  starving,  he  cannot 
touch  the  money  ;  to  derive  any  advantage  from  it 
he  himself  must  first  fall  ill.  That  is  what  the 
modern  thrift  means  to  the  labourer.  It  does 
nothing  to  further — on  the  contrary,  it  retards — his 
prosperity  ;  but  it  helps  him  in  a  particular  kind  of 
adversity.  It  drains  his  personal  wealth  away,  and 
leaves  him  destitute  of  his  capital  ;  it  robs  his  wife 
and  children  of  his  savings  ;  but  in  return  it  makes 
him  one  of  a  brotherhood  which  guarantees  to  him 
a  minimum  incomxC  for  a  short  time,  if  he  should  be 
out  of  health. 

An  oldish  man,  who  had  been  telling  me  one 
evening  how  they  used  to  live  in  his  boyhood, 
looked  pensively  across  the  valley  when  he  had 
done,  and  so  stood  for  a  minute  or  two,  as  if  trying 
to  recover  his  impressions  of  that  lost  time.  At  last, 
with  appearance  of  an  effort  to  speak  patiently, 
"  Ah,"  he  said,  "  they  tells  me  times  are  better  now, 
but  I  can't  see  it  ;"  and  it  was  plain  enough  that  he 
thought  our  present  times  the  worse.  So  far  as 
this  valley  is  concerned  I  incline  to  agree  with  him, 
although  in  general  it  is  a  debatable  question.  On 
the  one  hand,  it  may  be  that  the  things  a  labourer 
can  buy  at  a  shop  for  fifteen  shillings  a  week  are 
more  in  quantity  and  variety,  if  not  better  in  quality, 


140  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

than  those  which  his  forefathers  could  produce  by 
their  own  industry  ;  and  to  that  extent  the  advan- 
tage is  with  the  present  times.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  fifteen  shilUngs  are  not  every  week 
forthcoming  ;  and  whereas  the  old-time  cottager 
out  of  work  could  generally  find  something  profit- 
able to  do  for  himself,  the  modem  man,  having 
once  got  his  garden  into  order,  stands  unprofitably 
idle. 

Perhaps  the  worst  is  that,  owing  to  the  lowness 
of  their  wages,  the  people  have  never  been  able  to 
give  the  new  thrift  a  fair  trial.  After  all,  they  miss 
the  lump  sums  laid  by  against  need.  If  their  earn- 
ings would  ever  overtake  their  expenses  and  give  a 
little  margin,  they  might  do  better  ;  but  buying, 
as  they  are  obliged  to  do,  from  hand  to  mouth,  they 
buy  at  extravagant  prices.  Coal,  for  instance, 
which  costs  me  ajDout  twenty-six  shillings  for  a  ton, 
costs  the  labourer  half  as  much  again  as  that, 
because  he  can  only  pay  for  a  hundredweight  or  so  at 
a  time.  So,  too,  the  boots  he  can  get  for  four  or 
five  shillings  a  pair  are  the  dearest  of  all  boots.  They 
wear  out  in  a  couple  of  months  or  so,  and  another 
pair  must  be  bought  almost  before  another  four  or 
five  shillings  can  be  spared.  In  its  smaller  degree, 
a  still  more  absurd  difficulty  handicaps  the  people 
in  dealing  with  their  own  fruit-crops.  To  make 
raspberry  or  gooseberry  jam  should  be,  you  would 
think,  an  economy  delightful  to  the  cottage  women, 
if  only  as  a  piece  of  old-fashioned  thrift  ;  yet  they 


THE  NEW  THRIFT  141 

rarely  do  it.  If  they  had  the  necessary  utensils, 
still  the  weekly  money  at  their  disposal  will  not  run 
to  the  purchase  of  extra  firing  and  sugar.  It  is  all 
too  little  for  everyday  purposes,  and  they  are  glad 
to  eke  it  out  by  selling  their  fruit  for  middle-class 
women  to  preserve,  though  in  the  end  they  have  to 
buy  for  their  own  families  an  inferior  quality  of  jam 
at  a  far  higher  price. 

Wherever  you  follow  it  up,  you  will  find  the 
modern  thrift  not  quite  successful  in  the  cottages. 
It  is  not  elastic  enough  ;  or,  rather,  the  people's 
means  are  not  elastic  enough,  and  will  not  stretch 
to  its  demands.  There  is  well-being  in  it — variety 
of  food,  for  instance,  and  comfort  of  clothing — as 
soon  as  both  ends  can  be  made  to  meet  and  to  lap 
over  a  little  ;  but  it  strains  the  small  incomes  con- 
tinually to  the  breaking-point,  so  that  every  other 
consideration  has  to  give  way  under  it  to  a  pitiful 
calculation  of  pence.  For  the  sake  of  pence  the 
people  who  keep  fowls  sell  the  eggs,  and  feed  their 
children  on  bread  and  margarine  ;  and,  on  the  same 
principle,  they  do  not  even  seek  to  produce  other 
things  which  are  well  within  their  power  to  produce, 
but  are  too  luxurious  for  their  means.  "  'Twouldn't 
be  no  use  for  me  to  grow  strawberries,"  a  man  ex- 
plained ;  "  my  children'd  have  'em."  It  sounded 
a  strange  reason,  for  to  what  better  use  could  straw- 
berries be  put  ?  But  it  shows  how  tightly  the  people 
are  bound  down  by  their  commercial  conditions. 
In  order  to  make  the  Saturday's  shopping  easier. 


142  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

they  must  weigh  the  shillings  and  pence  value  of 
everything  they  possess  and  everything  they  attempt 
to  do. 

These  considerations,  however,  though  showing 
that  present  times  are  not  good,  do  not  prove  that 
they  are  worse  than  past  times.  It  may  be  that 
there  was  poverty  in  the  valley  before  the  enclosure 
of  the  common  quite  as  severe  as  there  is  now  ; 
and,  so  far  as  concerns  mere  economics,  that  event 
did  but  change  the  mode  of  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence, without  greatly  affecting  its  intensity.  People 
are  poor  in  a  different  way  now,  that  is  all.  Hence, 
in  its  more  direct  results,  the  loss  of  the  common 
has  not  mattered  much,  and  it  might  be  forgotten 
if  those  results  were  the  only  ones. 

But  they  are  not  the  only  ones.  The  results  have 
spread  from  the  economic  centre  outwards  until  the 
whole  life  of  the  people  has  been  affected,  new  in- 
fluences coming  into  play  which  previously  were 
but  little  felt.  So  searching,  indeed,  has  the  change 
been,  and  so  revolutionary,  that  anything  like  a 
full  account  of  it  would  be  out  of  the  question.  The 
chapters  that  follow,  therefore,  do  not  pretend  to 
deal  with  it  at  all  exhaustively  ;  at  most  they  will 
but  draw  attention  to  a  few  of  its  m.ore  striking 
aspects. 


X 

COMPETITION 

When  the  half-peasant  men  of  the  valley  began  to 
enter  the  labour  market  as  avowed  wage-earners,  a 
set  of  conditions  confronted  them  which  we  are  apt 
to  think  of  as  established  by  a  law  of  Nature,  but 
which,  in  fact,  may  be  almost  unknown  in  a  peasant 
community.  For  the  first  time  the  importance  of 
a  "  demand  for  labour  "  came  home  to  them.  I 
do  not  say  that  it  was  wholly  a  new  thing  ;  but  to 
the  older  villagers  it  had  not  been,  as  it  is  now  to 
their  descendants,  the  dominating  factor  in  their 
struggle  for  life.  On  the  contrary,  in  proportion  as 
their  labour  was  bestowed  immediately  on  produc- 
tive work  for  their  own  uses,  the  question  whether 
there  was  a  demand  for  labour  elsewhere  did  not 
arise.  The  common  was  indifferent  ;  it  wanted  none 
of  them.  It  neither  asked  them  to  avail  them- 
selves of  its  resources,  nor  paid  them  money  for 
doing  so,  nor  refused  employment  to  one  because 
another  was  already  engaged  there.  But  to-day, 
instead  of  going  for  a  livelihood  to  the  impartial 
heath,  the  people  must  wait  for  others  to  set  them 
to  work.     The  demand  which  they  supply  is  their 

143 


144  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

own  no  longer,  and  no  longer,  therefore,  is  their  living 
in  their  own  hands.  Of  all  the  old  families  in  the 
village,  I  think  there  are  only  two  left  now  who 
have  not  drifted  wholly  into  this  dependent  state  ; 
but  I  know  numbers  of  labourers,  often  out  of  work, 
whose  grandfathers  were  half  independent  of 
employers. 

In  theory,  no  doubt  the  advantage  ought  to  be 
with  the  present  times.  Under  the  new  system  a 
far  larger  population  is  able  to  live  in  the  parish  than 
could  possibly  have  been  supported  here  under  the 
old  ;  for  now,  in  place  of  the  scanty  products  of  the 
little  valley  and  the  heaths,  the  stores  of  the  whole 
world  may  be  drawn  upon  by  the  inhabitants  in 
return  for  the  wages  they  earn.  Only  there  is  the 
awkward  condition  that  they  must  earn  wages. 
Those  limitless  stores  cannot  be  approached  by  the 
labourer  until  he  is  invited — until  there  is  "a 
demand "  for  his  labour.  Property  owners,  or 
capitalists,  standing  between  him  and  the  world's 
capital,  are  able  to  pick  and  choose  between  him 
and  his  neighbours  as  the  common  never  did,  and 
to  decide  which  of  them  shall  work  and  have  some 
of  the  supplies. 

And  as  a  consequence  of  this  picking  and  choosing, 
competition  amongst  the  labourers  seeking  to  be 
employed  has  become  the  accepted  condition  of 
getting  a  living  in  the  village,  and  it  is  to  a  great 
extent  a  new  condition.  Previously  there  was  little 
room  for  anything  of  the  kind.     The  old  thrift  lent 


COMPETITION  145 

itself  to  co-operation  rather.  I  admit  that  I  have 
never  heard  of  any  system  being  brought  into  the 
activities  of  this  valley,  such  as  I  witnessed  lately 
in  another  part  of  England,  where  the  small  farmers, 
supplying  an  external  market,  and  having  no  hired 
labour,  were  helping  one  another  to  get  their  corn 
harvested,  all  being  solicitous  for  their  neighbours' 
welfare,  and  giving,  not  selling,  their  labour.  Here 
the  conditions  hardly  required  such  wholesale  co- 
operation as  that  ;  but  in  lesser  matters  both  kindli- 
ness and  economy  would  counsel  the  people  to  be 
mutually  helpful,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt 
that  the  counsel  was  taken.  Those  who  had  donkey- 
carts  would  willingly  bring  home  turfs  for  those  who 
had  none,  in  return  for  help  with  their  own  turf- 
cutting.  The  bread-ovens,  I  know,  were  at  the 
disposal  of  others  besides  the  owners.  At  pig- 
killing,  at  thatching,  at  clearing  out  wells  (where, 
in  fact,  I  have  seen  the  thing  going  on),  the  people 
would  put  themselves  at  one  another's  service. 
They  still  do  so  in  cases  where  there  is  no  question 
of  earning  money  for  a  living.  And  if  the  spirit  of 
friendly  co-operation  is  alive  now,  when  it  can  so 
rarely  be  put  in  practice,  one  may  readily  suppose 
that  it  was  fairly  vigorous  fifty  years  ago. 

But  no  spirit  of  co-operation  may  now  prompt 
one  wage-earner  to  ask,  or  another  to  proffer, 
assistance  in  working  for  wages.  As  well  might  one 
shopkeeper  propose  to  wait  on  another's  customers 
for  him.     Employers  would  not  have  it  ;  still  less 

10 


146  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

would  those  who  are  employed.  A  man  may  be 
fainting  at  his  job,  but  none  dare  help  him.  He 
would  resent,  he  would  fear,  the  proposal.  The 
job  is,  as  it  were,  his  property  ;  as  long  as  he  can 
stand  and  see  he  must  hold  it  against  all  comers, 
because  in  losing  hold  he  loses  his  claim  upon  the 
world's  supplies  of  the  necessaries  of  life. 

In  spite  of  all  the  latent  good-will,  therefore,  and 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  cottagers  are  all  on  the 
same  social  level,  intimacies  do  not  thrive  amongst 
them.     If  there  was  formerly  any  parochial  senti- 
ment in  the  village,   any  sense  of  community  of 
interest,  it  has  all  been  broken  up  by  the  exigencies  of 
competitive  wage-earning,  and  each  family  stands 
by  itself,  aloof  from  all  the  others.     The  interests 
clash.     Men  who  might  be  helpful  friends  in  other 
circumstances  are  in  the  position  of  rival  tradesmen 
competing  for  the  patronage  of  customers.     Not  now 
may  their  labour  be  a  bond  of  friendship  between 
them  ;  it  is  a  commodity  with  a  market  value,  to 
be  sold  in  the  market.     Hence,  just  as  in  trade, 
every  man  for  himself  is  the  rule  with  the  villagers  ; 
just  as  in  trade,  the  misfortune  of  one  is  the  oppor- 
tunity of  another.     All  the  maxims  of  competitive 
commerce  apply  fully  to   the  vendor  of  his  own 
labour.     There  must   be   "no   friendship   in   busi- 
ness ";   the  weakest  must  go   to   the  wall.     Each 
man  is  an  individualist  fighting  for  his  own  hand  ; 
and  to  give  as  little  as  he  can  for  as  much  as  he  can 
get  is  good  policy  for  him,  with  precisely  the  same 


COMPETITION  147 

limitations  as  those  that  govern  the  trading  of  the 
retail  merchant,  tormented  with  the  conflicting 
necessities  of  overcharging  and  underselling. 

It  follows  that  the  villagers  are  a  prey  to  jealousy 
and  suspicion — not,  perhaps,  when  they  m.eet  at 
the  public-house  or  on  the  road,  but  in  the  presence 
of  employers,  when  any  question  of  employment 
arises.  At  such  times  one  would  think  that  labour- 
ing men  have  no  critics  so  unkindly  as  their  own 
neighbours  and  equals.  It  is  true  those  who  are 
in  constant  work  are  commended  ;  but  if  you  ask 
about  a  man  who  is  "  on  the  market  "  and  open  for 
any  work  that  may  be  going,  his  rivals  are  unlikely 
to  answer  generously.  "  So-and-So  ?  .  .  .  H'm  ! 
...  He  do's  his  best  ;  but  he  don't  seem  to  get 
through,  somehow."  "  Old  Who-is-it  ?  Asked  he 
to  come  and  help  me,  have  ye  ?  Well,  you'll  judge 
for  yourself ;  but  I  don't  hardly  fancy  he'll  suit."  Or, 
again  :  "  Well,  we  all  knows  how  'tis  with  What's- 
his-name.  I  don't  say  but  what  he  keeps  on  work 
right  enough  ;  but  he'll  have  to  jump  about  smarter 
'n  what  I've  ever  knowed  'n,  if  he's  to  work  'long 
o'  me."  So,  too  often,  and  sometimes  in  crueller 
terms,  I  have  heard  efficient  labourers  speak  of  their 
neighbours.  Certainly  it  is  not  all  envy.  An  active 
man  finds  it  penance  to  work  with  a  slow  one,  and 
worse  than  penance  ;  for  his  own  reputation  may 
suffer,  if  his  own  output  of  work  should  be  dimin- 
ished by  the  other's  fault.  That  neighbour  of  mine 
engaged  at  hop-drying  doubtless  had  good  grounds 


148  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

for  exasperation  with  the  helper  sent  into  the  kiln, 
when  he  complained  to  the  master  :  "  Call  that  a 
man  you  sent  me  ?  If  that's  what  you  calls  a  man, 
I'd  sooner  you  let  me  send  for  my  old  woman  ! 
Blamed  if  she  wouldn't  do  better  than  that  feller  !" 
Detraction  like  this,  no  doubt,  is  often  justified  ; 
but  when  it  becomes  the  rule,  the  only  possible 
inference  is  that  an  instinctive  jealousy  prompts 
men  to  it,  in  instinctive  self-preservation. 

Yet  there  are  depths  of  dishonour — depths  not 
unknown  amongst  employers — into  which  the  village 
labourers  will  rarely  condescend  to  plunge,  acute 
though  the  temptation  may  be.  Not  once  have  I 
met  with  an  instance  of  one  man  deliberately 
scheming  to  get  another  man's  job  away  from  him. 
A  labourer  unable  to  keep  up  with  his  work  will  do 
almost  anything  to  avoid  having  a  helper  thrust 
upon  him — he  fears  the  introduction  of  a  possible 
rival  into  his  preserve.  But  this  is  not  the  same 
thing  as  pushing  another  man  out  ;  it  has  no  resem- 
blance to  the  behaviour  of  the  hustling  capitalist, 
who  opens  his  big  business  with  the  definite  inten- 
tion of  capturing  trade  away  from  little  businesses. 
That  is  a  course  to  which  my  impoverished  neigh- 
bours will  not  stoop.  The  nearest  thing  to  it  which 
I  have  known  was  the  case  of  those  men  mentioned 
in  an  earlier  chapt.-^r,  who  applied  for  Bettesworth's 
work  during  his  last  illness.  They  came,  however, 
believing  the  place  to  be  vacant ;  and  one  and  all, 
with  a  sincerity  I  never  doubted,  deprecated  the 


COMPETITION  149 

idea  of  desiring  to  take  it  away  from  him.  In  fact, 
the  application  was  distasteful  to  them.  Nothing, 
I  believe,  would  have  prevailed  upon  them  to  make 
it,  short  of  that  hunger  for  constant  employment 
which  many  of  the  men  feel  now,  under  their  new 
competitive  thrift.  That  they  should  have  been 
scrupulous  at  all  was  to  their  credit.  All  their  cir- 
cumstances constrain  the  people  to  be  selfish,  secret 
about  their  hopes,  swift  to  be  first  in  the  field  where 
a  chance  occurs.  And  it  is  surprising  how  vigilant 
a  lookout  is  kept,  and  how  wide  a  district  it  covers. 
By  what  routes  the  news  of  new  employment  travels 
I  do  not  know,  but  travel  it  does,  fast  and  far.  Men 
rise  early  and  walk  many  miles  to  be  before  others  at 
some  place  where  they  have  heard  of  work  to  be 
had  ;  and  one  gets  the  impression,  sometimes,  of  a 
population  silently  but  keenly  watching  to  see 
what  opportunity  of  well-being  may  suddenly  fall 
to  them,  not  in  general,  but  individually. 

Do  what  they  will  to  be  neighbourly,  competition 
for  the  privilege  of  earning  wages  separates  them 
sooner  or  later.  There  were  two  men  I  knew  who 
maintained  a  sort  of  comradeship  in  work  during 
several  years,  so  that  one  of  them  would  not  take 
a  job  unless  there  was  room  for  the  other,  and  if 
either  was  paid  off,  the  other  left  with  him.  They 
were  amongst  the  ablest  labourers  in  the  parish, 
used  to  working  long  hours  at  high  pressure,  and  in- 
different to  what  they  did,  provided  that  the  pay  was 
good.     I  heard  of  them  from  time  to  time — now  at 


150  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

railway  work,  now  at  harvesting,  now  helping  where 
a  bridge  was  being  built,  and  so  on.  It  was  the 
depression  of  the  winter  of  1908-09  that  finally  broke 
up  their  comradeship.  During  those  miserable 
months  even  these  two  were  unemployed,  and  went 
short  of  food  at  times  ;  and  now  they  are  working 
separately — competing  one  against  the  other,  in  fact. 


XI 

HUMILIATION 

Still  more  than  the  relations  of  the  villagers  with 
their  own  kind  their  relations  with  other  sorts  of 
people  have  suffered  change  under  the  new  thrift. 
To  just  that  extent  to  which  the  early  inhabitants  of 
the  valley  were  peasants,  they  formed,  as  it  were,  a 
separate  group,  careless  of  the  outer  world  and  its 
concerns.     They  could  afford  to  ignore  it,  and  to 
be  ignored  by  it.     To  them,   so  well  suited  with 
their  own  outlook  and  customs,  it  was  a  matter  of 
small  importance,  though  all  England  should  have 
other  views  than  theirs,  and  other  manners.     And 
the  outer  world,  on  its  side,  was  equally  indifferent. 
It  left  the  villagers  to  go  their  own  queer  way,  and 
recognized — as  it  does  in  the  case  of  other  separate 
groups  of  folk,  such  as  fishermen  or  costermongers — 
that  what  seemed  singular  in  them  was  probably 
justified  b}^  the  singularity  of  their  circumstances. 
Nobody  supposed  that  they  were  a  wrong  or  a  re- 
grettable type  who  ought  to  be  "  done  good  to  "  or 
reformed.     They  belonged  to  their  own  set.     They 
were  English,  of  course  ;  but  they  were  outside  the 
ordinary  classifications  of  English  society. 

151 


152  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

Even  towards  those  of  them  who  went  out  of  the 
valley  to  earn  wages  this  was  still  the  attitude. 
They  went  out  as  peasants,  and  were  esteemed 
because  they  had  the  ability  of  peasants.  In  much 
the  same  way  as  country  folk  on  the  Continent  take 
their  country  produce  into  town  markets  the  men 
of  this  valley  took,  into  the  hop-grounds  and  fields 
of  the  neighbouring  valley,  or  into  its  old-fashioned 
streets  and  stable  yards,  their  toughness,  their  handi- 
ness,  their  intimate  understanding  of  country  crafts  ; 
and,  returning  home  in  the  evening,  they  slipped  back 
again  into  their  natural  peasant  state,  without  any 
feeling  of  disharmony  from  the  day's  employment. 

There  was  no  reason  why  it  should  be  otherwise. 
Although,  at  work,  they  had  come  into  contact  with 
people  unlike  themselves  in  some  ways,  the  contrast 
was  not  of  such  a  kind  that  it  disheartened  or  seemed 
to  disgrace  them.  At  the  time  of  the  enclosure  of 
the  common,  a  notable  development,  certainly,  was 
beginning  amongst  the  employing  classes,  but  it 
had  not  then  proceeded  far.  Of  course  the  day  of 
the  yeoman  farmer  was  almost  done  ;  and  with  it 
there  had  disappeared  some  of  that  equality  which 
permitted  wage-earning  men  to  be  on  such  easy 
terms  with  their  masters  as  one  hears  old  people 
describe.  No  longer,  probably,  would  a  farmer 
take  a  nickname  from  his  men,  or  suffer  them  to  call 
his  daughters  familiarly  by  their  Christian  names  ; 
and  no  longer  did  master  and  man  live  on  quite  the 
same  quality  of  food,  or  dress  in  the  same  sort  of 


HUMILIATION  153 

clothes.  Nevertheless  the  distinction  between  em- 
ployers and  employed — between  the  lower  middle- 
class  and  the  working-class — was  not  nearly  so 
marked  fifty  years  ago  as  it  has  since  become. 
The  farmers,  for  their  part,  were  still  veritable 
country  folk,  inheritors  themselves  of  a  set  of  rural 
traditions  nearly  akin  to  those  of  the  peasant 
squatters  in  this  valley.  And  even  the  townsmen, 
who  were  the  only  others  who  could  give  employ- 
ment to  these  villagers,  were  extremely  countrified  in 
character.  In  their  little  sleepy  old  town — not  half 
its  present  size,  and  the  centre  then  of  an  agricul- 
tural and  especially  a  hop-growing  district — people 
were  intimately  interested  in  country  things.  No 
matter  what  a  man's  trade  or  profession — linen- 
draper,  or  saddler,  or  baker,  or  lawyer,  or  banker — 
he  found  it  worth  while  to  watch  the  harvests,  and 
to  know  a  great  deal  about  cattle  and  sheep,  and 
more  than  a  great  deal  about  hops.  Some  of  the 
tradesmen  were,  in  fact,  growing  wealthy  as  hop- 
planters  ;  and  one  and  all  identified  themselves 
with  the  outdoor  industries  of  the  neighbourhood. 
And  though  some  grew  rich,  and  changed  their  style 
of  living,  they  did  not  change  their  mental  equip- 
ment, but  continued  (as  I  myself  remember)  more 
"  provincial  "  than  many  a  farmer  is  nowadays. 
All  their  thoughts,  all  their  ideas,  could  be  quite 
well  expressed  in  the  West  Surrey  and  Hampshire 
dialect,  which  the  townspeople,  like  the  village  folk, 
continued  to  speak. 


154  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

Meanwhile,  the  work  requh-ed  by  these  employers 
ran,  as  yet,  very  much  on  antiquated  lines.  Perhaps 
it  was  that  the  use  of  machinery  had  received  a  set- 
back, twenty  years  earlier,  by  the  "  Swing  Riots," 
of  which  a  few  memories  still  survive  ;  at  any  rate 
haymaking,  harvesting,  threshing — all  the  old  tasks, 
indeed — were  still  done  by  hand  ;  thatch  had  not 
gone  out  of  use  for  barns  and  stables  ;  nor,  for  house - 
roofs,  had  imported  slates  quite  taken  the  place  of 
locally  made  tiles.  The  truth  is,  the  town,  in  its 
more  complex  way,  had  not  itself  passed  far  beyond 
the  primitive  stage  of  dependence  on  local  resources 
and  local  skill.  It  is  really  surprising  how  few  were 
the  materials,  or  even  the  finished  goods,  imported 
into  it  at  that  time.  Clothing  stuffs  and  metals 
were  the  chief  of  them.  Of  course  the  grocers  (not 
"  provision  merchants  "  then)  did  their  small  trade 
in  sugar  and  coffee,  and  tea  and  spices  ;  there  was 
a  tinware  shop,  an  ironmonger's,  a  wine-merchant's ; 
and  all  these  necessarily  were  supplied  from  outside. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  no  foreign  meat  or  flour, 
or  hay  or  straw  or  timber,  found  their  way  into  the 
town,  and  comparatively  few  manufactured  pro- 
ducts from  other  parts  of  England.  Carpenters 
still  used  the  oak  and  ash  and  elm  of  the  neighbour- 
hood, sawn  out  for  them  by  local  sawyers  :  the 
wheelwright,  because  iron  was  costly,  mounted  his 
cartwheels  on  huge  axles  fashioned  by  himself  out 
of  the  hardest  beech  ;  the  smith,  shoeing  horses  or 
putting  tyres  on  wheels,  first  made  the  necessary 


HUMILIATION  155 

nails  for  himself,  hammering  them  out  on  his  own 
anvil.  So,  too,  with  many  other  things.  Boots, 
brushes,  earthenware,  butter  and  lard,  candles, 
bricks — they  were  all  of  local  make  ;  cheese  was 
brought  back  from  Weyhill  Fair  in  the  waggons 
which  had  carried  down  the  hops  ;  in  short,  to  an 
extent  hard  to  realize,  the  town  was  independent  of 
commerce  as  we  know  it  now,  and  looked  to  the  farms 
and  forests  and  the  claypits  and  coppices  of  the 
neighbourhood  for  its  supplies.  A  leisurely  yet 
steady  traffic  in  rural  produce  therefore  passed  along 
its  streets,  because  it  was  the  life-centre,  the  heart, 
of  its  own  countryside  ;  and  the  village  labourer, 
going  in  and  out  upon  his  town  tasks,  or  even  working 
all  day  in  some  secluded  yard  behind  the  street,  still 
found  a  sort  of  homeliness  in  the  materials  he 
handled,  and  was  in  touch  with  the  ideas  and  pur- 
poses of  his  employer. 

Owing  to  these  same  circumstances,  the  wage- 
earners  of  that  day  enjoyed  what  their  descendants 
would  consider  a  most  blissful  freedom  from  anxiety. 
On  the  one  side,  the  demand  for  labour  was  fairly 
steady.  It  was  the  demand  of  a  community  not 
rapidly  growing  in  numbers,  nor  yet  subject  to 
crazes  and  sudden  changes  of  a  fashion — a  com- 
munity patiently,  nay,  cheerfully,  conservative  in 
its  ambitions,  not  given  to  rash  speculation,  but 
contented  to  go  plodding  on  in  its  time-honoured 
and  modest  well-being.  What  the  townsfolk  wanted 
one  year  they  wanted  the  next,  and  so  onwards  with 


156  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

but  quiet  progress.  And  as  the  demand  for  labour 
was  thus  steady,  so  on  the  other  side  was  the  supply 
of  it.  A  dissatisfied  employer  could  not  advertise, 
then,  in  a  London  daily  paper,  and  get  scores  of  men 
applying  to  him  for  work  at  a  day's  notice  ;  nor, 
indeed,  would  strangers  have  been  able  to  do  the 
work  in  many  cases,  so  curiously  was  its  character 
determined  by  local  conditions.  Besides,  town 
opinion,  still  prejudiced  by  memories  of  the  old 
Poor  Law,  would  have  viewed  with  extreme  dis- 
favour, had  such  an  experiment  ever  been  tried, 
the  importation  of  men  and  families  whose  coming 
must  surely  result  in  pauperism  for  somebody,  and 
in  a  consequent  charge  upon  the  rates. 

So,  putting  together  the  leading  factors — namely, 
a  steady  demand  for  countrified  labour,  a  steady 
supply  of  it,  and  an  employing  class  full  of  country 
ideas — we  get  a  rough  idea  of  the  conditions  of 
wage-earning  in  the  neighbourhood,  when  the  folk 
of  this  valley,  fenced  out  from  their  common,  were 
forced  to  look  to  wage-earning  as  their  sole  means 
of  living.  That  the  conditions  were  ideal  it  would 
be  foolish  to  suppose  ;  but  that,  for  villagers  at  least, 
they  had  certain  advantages  over  present  condi- 
tions is  not  to  be  denied.  Especially  we  may  note 
two  unpleasing  features  of  modern  wage-earning 
which  had  not  then  made  their  appearance. 

In  the  first  place,  the  work  itself  was  interesting 
to  do,  was  almost  worth  doing  for  its  own  sake, 
when  it  still  called  for  much  old-world  skill  and  know- 


HUMILIATION  157 

ledge,  and  when  the  praises  of  the  master  were  the 
praises  of  an  expert  who  well  knew  what  he  was 
talking  about.  On  these  terms,  it  was  no  mean 
pleasure  that  the  able  labouring  men  had  in  their 
labour.  They  took  a  pride  in  it — as  you  may  soon 
discern  if  you  will  listen  to  the  older  men  talking. 
I  have  heard  them  boast,  as  of  a  triumph,  of  the 
line  flattering  surprise  of  some  master,  when  he  had 
come  to  look  at  their  day's  work,  and  found  it  more 
forward,  or  better  done,  than  he  had  dared  to  hope. 
The  words  he  said  are  treasured  up  with  delight, 
and  repeated  with  enthusiasm,  after  many  years. 

As  for  the  other  point,  it  has  already  been  touched 
upon.  Harsh  the  employers  might  be — more  callous 
by  far,  I  believe,  than  they  are  now  ;  but  in  their 
general  outlook  they  were  not,  as  yet,  so  very  far 
removed  from  the  men  who  worked  for  them. 
Their  ideas  of  good  and  bad  were  such  as  the  peasant 
labourer  from  this  valley  could  understand  ;  and 
master  and  man  were  not  greatly  out  of  touch  in  the 
matter  of  civilization.  It  made  a  vast  difference  to 
the  labourer's  comfort.  He  might  be  hectored, 
bullied,  cheated  even,  but  he  hardly  felt  himself 
degraded  too.  It  was  not  a  being  out  of  another 
sphere  that  oppressed  him  ;  not  one  who  despised 
him,  not  one  whose  motives  were  strange  and  mys- 
terious. The  cruellest  oppression  was  inhuman 
rather  than  unhuman — the  act,  after  all,  only  of  a 
more  powerful,  not  of  a  more  dazzling,  personage — 
so  that  it  produced  in  him  no  humiliating  sense  of 


158  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

belonging  to  an  inferior  order  of  creation.  And,  of 
course,  oppression  was  exceptional.  Employers 
were  obliged  to  get  on  comfortably  with  their  work- 
people, by  the  conditions  governing  the  supply  of 
labour.  I  have  in  my  mind  several  cases  mentioned 
to  me  by  people  long  ago  dead,  in  which  men  for 
various  faults  (drunkenness  in  one  instance,  theft 
in  another)  were  dismissed  from  their  employment 
again  and  again,  yet  as  often  reinstated,  because 
the  master  found  it  easier  to  put  up  with  their 
faults  than  to  do  without  their  skill.  It  may  be 
inferred,  therefore,  that  ordinary  men  got  along 
fairly  well  with  their  masters  in  the  ordinary  course. 

This  state  of  things,  however,  has  gradually  passed 
away.  As  I  shall  show  in  another  chapter,  the 
labourer  may  now  take  but  little  interest  and  but 
little  pride  in  his  work  ;  but  the  change  in  that 
direction  is  not  more  pronounced  than  is  the  change 
in  the  relations  between  the  villagers  and  the  em- 
ploying classes.  It  is  a  cruel  evil  that  the  folk  of 
the  valley  have  suffered  there.  No  longer  are  they 
a  group  whose  peculiarities  are  respected  while  their 
qualities  are  esteemed.  In  their  intercourse  with 
the  outer  world  they  have  become,  as  it  were,  de- 
graded, humiliated  ;  and  when  they  go  out  of  the 
valley  to  earn  wages,  it  is  to  take  the  position  of 
an  inferior  and  almost  servile  race.  The  reason  is 
that  the  employing  class,  as  a  whole,  has  moved  on, 
leaving  the  labourers  where  they  were,  until  now 


HUMILIATION  159 

a  great  gulf  divides  them.  Merely  in  relative 
wealth,  if  that  were  all,  the  difference  has  widened 
enormously.  Seventy  or  eighty  years  ago,  I  have 
heard  say,  the  shopkeeper  in  the  town  who  had  as 
much  as  a  hundred  pounds  put  by  was  thought  a 
rich  man.  There  are  now  many  artisans  there  whose 
savings  exceed  that  figure,  while  the  property  of  the 
townsmen  who  employ  labour  is,  of  course,  valued 
often  in  thousands.  The  labouring  people  alone 
remain  without  savings,  as  poor  as  their  grandfathers 
when  the  common  was  first  enclosed. 

But  it  is  a  question  of  civilization  far  more  than  of 
wealth  that  now  divides  the  employing  classes  from 
the  employed.  The  former  have  discarded  much  of 
their  provincialism  ;  they  are  astir  with  ambitions 
and  ideas  at  which  the  old  town  would  have  stood 
aghast.  In  beliefs  and  in  tastes  they  are  a  new 
people.  They  have  new  kinds  of  knowledge ; 
almost  one  may  say  that  they  use  their  brains  in  new 
ways  ;  and  the  result  is  that  between  them  and  the 
village  labourer  mutual  understanding  has  broken 
down.  How  far  the  separation  has  gone  is  betrayed 
in  the  fact  that  the  countrified  speech,  common  to 
village  and  town  fifty  years  ago,  has  become  a  subject 
of  derision  to  the  town-people,  forgetful  of  their  own 
ancestry.  So,  in  field  and  street  and  shop,  the  two 
kinds  of  folk  meet  face  to  face,  not  with  an  out- 
look, and  hardly  with  a  speech,  which  both  can 
appreciate,  but  like  distinct  races,  the  one  domi- 
nant, the  other  subject. 


i6o  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

y  'And,  all  but  inevitably,  the  breach  is  daily 
widened  by  the  conditions  on  which  the  new  civiliza- 
tion of  the  employing  class  is  based.  For,  with  all 
its  good  features,  it  is  rather  a  barbaric  civilization, 
in  this  sense — that  it  is  more  a  matter  of  fineness  in 
possessions  than  in  personal  qualities.  It  cannot 
be  maintained  without  a  costly  apparatus  of  dress 
and  furniture,  and  of  drudges  to  do  the  dirty  work  ; 
and  consequently  it  demands  success  in  that  com- 
petitive thrift  which  gives  a  good  money-income. 
Without  that  the  employers  are  nowhere.  They  are 
themselves  driven  very  hard  ;  they  must  make 
things  pay  ;  to  secure  the  means  of  civilization  for 
themselves,  they  must  get  them  out  of  the  labourer 
with  his  eighteen  shillings  a  week.  In  vain,  there- 
fore, are  they  persuaded  by  their  newest  ideas  to 
see  in  him  an  Englishman  as  good  as  themselves  : 
they  may  assent  to  the  principle,  but  in  practice  it 
is  as  imperative  as  ever  to  make  him  a  profitable 
drudge.  Accordingly,  those  relations  of  mutual 
approval  which  were  not  uncommon  of  old  between 
master  and  man  cannot  now  be  maintained.  If  it  is 
impossible  for  the  village  folk  to  understand  the 
town  folk,  it  is  equally  impossible  for  the  town  folk 
to  understand  the  village  folk.  They  cannot  afford 
to  understand.  The  peasant  outlook  is  out  of  date 
— a  cast-off  thing  ;  and  for  cleaving  to  it  the  labourer 
is  despised.  If  he  could  be  civilized,  and  yet  be 
made  to  "  pay,"  that  is  what  would  best  suit  the 
middle-classes  ;    and   that  is  really  the  impossible 


HUMILIATION  i6i 

object  at  which  they  aim,  when  they  try  to  "  do  him 
good."  They  want  to  make  him  more  like  them- 
selves, and  yet  keep  him  in  his  place  of  dependence 
and  humiliation. 

It  must  be  said  that  amongst  a  section  of  the 
employers  there  is  no  desire  to  "do  good  "  even  on 
these  terms.  While  the  labouring  people,  on  their 
side,  betray  little  or  no  class  feeling  of  hostility 
towards  employers,  the  converse  is  not  true,  but 
jealousy,  suspicion,  some  fear — the  elements  of  bitter 
class-war,  in  fact — frequently  mark  the  attitude  of 
middle-class  people  towards  the  labouring  class.  It 
seems  to  be  forgotten  that  the  men  are  English. 
One  hears  them  spoken  of  as  an  alien  and  objection- 
able race,  worth  nothing  but  to  be  made  to  work. 
The  unemployment  which  began  to  beggar  so  many 
of  my  village  neighbours  after  the  South  African 
War  was  actually  welcomed  by  numerous  employers 
in  this  district.  "  It  will  do  the  men  good,"  people 
said  to  me  ;"  it  will  teach  them  their  place.  They 
were  getting  too  independent."  The  election  of 
1906,  when  the  Conservative  member  for  the  divi- 
sion was  unseated,  brought  out  a  large  crop  of 
similarly  malevolent  expressions.  "  Look  at  the 
class  of  people  who  have  the  vote,"  said  a  disgusted 
villa  lady,  with  her  nose  in  the  air.  "  Only  the 
low,  ignorant  people  wear  those  colours,"  another 
lady  assured  her  little  boy,  whose  eyes  preferred 
"  those  colours  "  to  the  favours  in  his  own  button- 

II 


i62  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

hole.  More  pointed  was  the  overheard  remark  of  a 
well-to-do  employer,  irritated  by  the  election  crowds 
in  the  town  :  "  As  my  wife  says,  it  was  bad  enough 
before.  The  children  of  the  lower  classes  used,  as 
it  was,  to  take  the  inside  of  the  pavement,  and  we 
had  to  walk  on  the  kerb.  But  now  we  shall  be 
driven  out  into  the  road." 

I  would  not  mention  these  things  were  it  not  for 
their  significance  to  the  village  folk.  By  becoming 
wage-earners  solely,  the  villagers  have  fallen  into 
the  disfavour  of  an  influential  section  of  the  middle- 
classes,  most  of  whom  have  no  other  desire  than  to 
keep  them  in  a  sufficient  state  of  servility  to  be 
useful.  How  else  is  one  to  interpret  that  frequent 
middle-class  outcry  against  education  :  "  What  are 
we  going  to  do  for  servants  ?"  or  how  else  the 
grudging  attitude  taken  up  towards  the  few  com- 
forts that  cottage  people  are  able  to  enjoy  ?  I 
listened  lately  to  two  men  talking  of  "  Tariff  Re- 
form " — one  of  them  a  commercial  traveller,  lofty 
in  his  patriotism.  When  mention  was  made  of 
some  old  man's  tale,  that  in  his  boyhood  he  rarely 
tasted  meat,  "  unless  a  sheep  died,"  the  commercial 
traveller  commented  scornfully,  "  And  now  every 
working  man  in  the  kingdom  thinks  he  must  have 
meat  twice  a  day  " — as  though  such  things  ought 
not  to  be  in  the  British  Empire.  The  falsehood  of 
the  remark  enhanced  its  significance.  It  was  the 
sort  of  thing  to  say  in  hotel-bars,  or  in  the  offices 
of  commerce — the  sort   of  thing   that  goes  down 


HUMILIATION  163 

well  with  emplo^^ers.  It  indicated  that  the  animus 
of  which  I  am  speaking  is  almost  a  commonplace. 
In  truth,  I  have  heard  it  expressed  dozens  of  times, 
in  dozens  of  ways,  yet  always  with  the  same  implied 
suggestion,  that  the  English  labouring  classes  are  a 
lower  order  of  beings,  who  must  be  treated  accord- 
ingly. 

And  yet  employers  of  this  type,  representing  the 
wealth,  perhaps,  but  by  no  means  the  culture,  of 
modern  civilization,  are,  in  fact,  nearer  to  the  un- 
lettered labourers  in  their  outlook,  and  are  there- 
fore by  far  less  embarrassing  to  them,  than  those  of 
another  and  kindlier  type  which  figures  largely  in 
this  parish  to-day.  Those  people  for  whom  the 
enclosure  of  the  common,  as  it  has  turned  out,  made 
room  in  the  valley — I  mean  the  well-to-do  residents 
— employ  local  labour,  not  for  profit  at  all,  but  to 
minister  to  their  own  pleasure,  in  their  gardens 
and  stables,  and  the  majority  of  them  would  be 
genuinely  glad  to  be  helpful  to  their  poorer  neigh- 
bours. The  presence  of  poverty  reproaches  them  ; 
their  consciences  are  uneasy  ;  or,  better  still,  some 
kind  of  regard,  some  kind  of  respect,  goes  out  from 
them  towards  the  toilsome  men  and  the  over- 
burdened women  whom,  in  fact,  they  have  dis- 
placed. Yet  compassion  is  not  the  same  thing  as 
understanding,  and  the  cottagers  know  very  well 
that  even  their  best  friends  of  this  kind  have  neither 
the  knowledge  nor  the  taste  to  appreciate  them  in 
their  own  way.     S5mipathy  for  their  troubles — yes. 


i64  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

there  is  that  ;  but  sympathy  with  their  enjoyments 
hardly  any  property-owner  dreams  of  cultivating  ; 
and  this  is  the  more  true  the  more  the  property- 
owner  has  been  polished  by  his  own  civilization. 
A  lady  long  resident  here  was  quite  surprised  to 
hear  from  me,  some  months  ago,  that  the  cottagers 
are  ardent  gardeners.  "  Dear  me  !"  she  said  ;  "  I 
had  no  idea  of  it,"  And  yet  one  of  the  ablest  men 
of  the  parish  had  tended  her  own  garden  for  years. 
Hence  it  is  in  their  intercourse  with  these — the 
well-meaning  and  cultivated — that  the  villagers  are 
most  at  a  loss.  In  those  embittered  employers  who 
merely  seek  to  make  money  out  of  him  the  labourer 
does  at  least  meet  with  some  keen  recognition  of 
his  usefulness  ;  but  with  these  others  he  is  all  at 
sea.  Non-introspective,  a  connoisseur  of  garden 
crops  and  of  pig-sties,  and  of  saved-up  seeds ; 
cunning  to  understand  the  "  set  "  of  spade  or  hoe, 
and  the  temper  of  scythe  and  fag-hook  ;  jealous  of 
the  encroachment  of  gravelled  walk  or  evergreen 
hedge  upon  the  useful  soil  ;  an  expert  in  digging 
and  dunging — he  is  very  well  aware  that  the  praises 
of  the  villa-people  employing  him  are  ignorant 
praises.  His  best  skill  is,  after  all,  overlooked. 
The  cunning  of  his  craft  excites  in  them  none  of 
the  sympathy  of  a  fellow-expert,  and  is  but  poorly 
rewarded  by  their  undiscriminating  approval.  At 
the  same  time,  the  things  which  these  people  re- 
quire of  him — the  wanton  things  they  ask  him  to 
do  with  the  soil,  levelling  it  to  make  lawns,  wasting 


HUMILIATION  165 

it  upon  shrubberies  and  drives,  while  they  fence-in 
the  heath  patches  and  fence-out  the  public — prove 
to  him  more  fully  than  any  language  can  do  that 
they  put  a  different  sort  of  value  upon  the  country- 
side from  its  old  value,  and  that  they  care  not  a 
straw  for  the  mode  of  life  that  was  his  before  they 
came  here.  All  their  ways  are  eloquent  of  condemna- 
tion of  his  tastes.  And  yet  again,  while  his  old  skill 
fails  to  be  understood,  and  his  old  outlook  to  be  appre- 
ciated, he  finds  that  the  behaviour  preferred  in  him  is 
oftener  than  not  a  behaviour  which  his  forefathers 
would  have  thought  silly,  to  say  the  least — a 
finikin,  fastidious  behaviour,  such  as  he  would  scorn 
to  practise  at  home.  Thus  in  all  ways  the  em- 
ployers most  conscientiously  humane  are  those  who 
can  least  avoid,  in  their  tastes  and  their  whole 
manner  of  living,  snubbing  him  and  setting  him 
down  in  an  inferior  place.  They  cannot  help  it, 
now  that  they  have  thrust  themselves  upon  him  as 
neighbours.  The  more  they  interest  themselves  in 
him,  the  more  glaringly  is  the  difference  which 
separates  themselves  from  him  brought  out. 

Whether,  if  the  common  had  remained  open,  the 
villagers  could  still  have  held  aloof,  at  this  time  of 
day,  from  the  movements  of  the  outer  world  is  a 
question  not  worth  discussion.  The  enclosure  was 
brought  to  pass  ;  the  keystone  was  knocked  out  of 
the  arch  ;  and  here  are  some  of  the  indirect  conse- 
quences.    From   a  position   in   which   the    world's 


i66  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

distinctions  of  class  and  caste  were  hardly  noticed — 
a  position  which  was,  so  to  speak,  an  island  of 
refuge,  where  self-respect  could  be  preserved  in 
preserving  the  old  rough  peasant  ways — the  valley 
folk  have  been  forced  into  such  relations  with  the 
world  outside  the  valley  as  we  have  seen.  They  are 
no  longer  a  separate  set,  unclassified,  but  a  grade 
has  been  assigned  to  them  in  the  classification  of 
society  at  large,  and  it  is  wellnigh  the  lowest  grade 
of  all,  for  only  the  pauper  and  criminal  classes  are 
below  them.  In  this  sense,  therefore,  they  are  a 
"  degraded  "  people,  though  by  no  fault  of  their 
own.  Amongst  "  the  masses  "  is  where  they  are 
counted.  Moreover,  since  they  are  now,  as  we  have 
seen,  competing  against  one  another  for  the  right 
to  live,  none  of  the  concessions  are  made  to  them 
now  that  were  of  old  made  to  the  group  of  them, 
but  they  count,  and  are  judged,  individually,  am.ongst 
the  millions  of  the  English  proletariat.  "  In- 
feriority "  has  come  into  their  lives  ;  it  is  expected 
of  them  to  treat  almost  everybody  else  as  a  superior 
person.  But  the  cruellest  indignity  of  all  is  that, 
although  we  regard  them  as  inferiors,  we  still  look 
to  them  to  admire  and  live  up  to  our  standards  ; 
and  they  are  to  conform  to  our  civilization,  yet 
without  the  income  it  requires  or  the  social  recogni- 
tion it  should  secure.  And  if  they  will  not  do  this 
willingly,  then  shall  they  be  coerced,  or  at  least 
kept  in  order,  by  "  temperance  "  and  other  "  re- 
forming "  legislation,  and  by  the  police. 


XII 

THE  HUMILIATED 

The  effects  of  this  "  inferiority  "  which  has  been 
thrust  upon  the  villagers  are  not  exactly  conspicuous 
in  any  particular  direction.  As  it  has  been  shown 
already,  the  people  themselves  seem  almost  un- 
aware of  any  grievance  in  the  matter,  the  change 
having  come  upon  them  too  gradually  for  it  to  be 
sharply  felt.  They  bear  no  malice  against  their 
employers.  You  would  hardly  learn,  from  any- 
thing that  they  consciously  say  or  do,  that  in 
becoming  so  humiliated  they  have  been  hurt  in 
their  feelings,  or  have  found  it  necessary  to  change 
their  habits. 

Indeed,  the  positive  alteration  in  their  manners, 
by  which  I  mean  the  adoption  of  new  ways  in  place 
of  old  ones,  has  probably  not  amounted  to  a  great 
deal.  I  admit  that  I  have  no  means  of  estimating 
how  much  it  does  amount  to.  During  fifty  years, 
in  which  every  cottager  must  now  and  then  have 
become  aware  of  constraint  put  upon  him  or  her  by 
the  superior  attitude  of  the  employing  class,  it  is 
quite  possible  that  there  have  been  innumerable 
small  concessions  and  adaptations  of  manner,  and 

167 


i68  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

that  these  have  accumulated  into  a  general  change 
which  would  surprise  us  if  it  could  be  measured. 
But   I  incline  to  think  that   the  effects  of  class- 
pressure  have  been  chiefly  negative  ;   that,   while 
employers  have  been  adopting  new  modes  of  life, 
all  that  has  happened  to  the  labouring  folk  here  in 
the  valley  is  that  this  or  that  habit,  found  inex- 
pedient at  last,  has  been  quietly  dropped.     A  sort 
of  reserve  in  the  village  temper,  a  want  of  gaiety, 
a  subdued  air — this,   which  one  cannot  help  ob- 
serving, is  probably  the  shadow  cast  upon  the  people 
from  the  upraised  middle-class.      It  looks  sugges- 
tive, too.     Yet,  upon  examining  it,  one  fails  to  find 
in  it  any  definite  token  that  would  show  exactly 
how  and  where  the  village  temper  has  been  touched, 
or  in  what  light  "  superior  "  persons  are  regarded 
in    the    cottages.     The    people    appear    enigmatic. 
They  keep  their  own  counsel.     Whether  they  are 
bewildered  or  amused  at  the  behaviour  of  employers, 
or  alarmed  or  embittered  by  it,  or  actually  indif- 
ferent to  it,  no  sign  escapes  them  when  members  of 
the  employing  class  are  by. 

In  these  circumstances,  it  is  instructive  to  turn 
aside  for  a  while  from  the  grown-up  people  of  the 
village,  and  to  consider  their  children  ;  because  the 
children  do  not  learn  about  the  employing  class  by 
direct  intercourse,  but  derive  from  their  parents 
such  ideas  as  they  have  of  what  is  safe  to  do,  and 
what  is  proper,  where  employing  people  are  con- 
cerned.    As  soon  as  this  truth  is  realized,  a  curious 


THE  HUMILIATED  169 

significance  appears  in  some  characteristic  habits 
of  the  village  school  boys  and  girls.  The  boys, 
especially,  deserve  remark.  That  they  are  in  general 
"  rough,"  "  uncivilized,"  I  suppose  might  go  with- 
out saying.  It  might  also  go  without  saying,  were 
it  not  that  the  comparison  turns  out  to  be  useful, 
that  in  animal  spirits,  physical  courage,  love  of 
mischief  and  noise,  they  are  at  least  a  match  for 
middle-class  boys  who  go  to  the  town  grammar- 
school.  I  wish  I  could  say  that  they  have  an 
equally  good  sense  of  "  playing  the  game,"  an 
equally  strong  esprit  de  corps,  and  so  on.  Un- 
fortunately, these  traditions  have  hardly  reached  the 
village  school  as  yet,  and  perhaps  will  not  easily 
make  their  way  there,  amongst  the  children  of 
parents  whom  the  struggle  for  life  compels  to  be  so 
suspicious  and  jealous.  The  question  is,  however, 
beside  the  point  now.  Viewed  without  prejudice, 
the  village  boys  must  be  thought  quite  as  good 
material  as  any  other  English  boys  ;  you  can  see 
that  there  is  the  making  of  strong  and  brave  men 
in  them.  With  similar  chances  they  would  not  be 
inferior  in  any  respect  to  the  sons  of  the  middle 
classes. 

But  under  existing  conditions  the  two  sorts  of 
boys  develop  some  curious  differences  of  habit. 
Where  those  from  middle-class  homes  are  self- 
possessed,  those  from  the  labourers'  cottages  are 
not  merely  shy,  not  merely  uncouth  and  lubberly  ; 
they  grow  furtive,  suspicious,  timid  as  wild  animals, 


170  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

on  the  watch  for  a  chance  to  run.  Audacious 
enough  at  bird's-nesting,  sUding,  tree-cHmbing, 
fighting,  and  impertinent  enough  towards  people  of 
their  own  kind,  they  quail  before  the  first  challenge 
of  "  superiority,"  All  aplomb  goes  from  them  then. 
It  is  distressing  to  see  how  they  look  :  with  an  ex- 
pression of  whimpering  rebellion,  as  though  the 
superior  person  had  unhuman  qualities,  not  to  be 
reckoned  on — as  though  there  were  danger  in  his 
presence.  An  incident  of  a  few  years  ago,  very 
trumpery  in  itself,  displayed  to  me  in  the  sharpest 
distinctness  the  contrast  between  the  two  orders  of 
boys  in  this  respect.  In  the  hedge  which  parts  my 
garden  from  the  lane  there  is  a  nut-tree,  too  tempt- 
ing to  all  boys  when  the  nuts  are  ripe.  At  that 
season  one  hears  whispered  and  exclamatory  con- 
fabulations going  on  in  the  lane,  and  then  large 
stones  go  crashing  up  into  the  tree,  falling  back 
sometimes  within  the  hedge,  where  there  is  a  bit  of 
grass  and  a  garden  seat.  Occasionally,  playing  the 
absurd  part  of  irate  property-owner,  I  have  gone 
to  the  gate  near  by  to  drive  off  the  offenders,  but 
have  opened  it  only  in  time  to  see  a  troop  of  urchins, 
alarmed  by  the  click  of  the  gate-latch,  scurrying 
away  like  rabbits  round  the  bend  of  the  lane.  One 
Sunday  afternoon,  however,  when  I  looked  out  after 
a  stone  had  fallen  nearly  on  my  head,  it  was  to  find 
two  boys  calmly  waiting  for  me  to  approach  them. 
Their  school  caps  showed  them  to  be  two  boys  of 
the  grammar-school.     The  interview  went  comically. 


THE  HUMILIATED  171 

Upon  being  told  crossly  that  they  were  a  nuisance, 
the  boys  apologized — an  act  which  seemed  to  put 
me  in  the  wrong.  In  my  annoyance  at  that,  I 
hinted  ironically  that,  in  fact,  I  was  a  benevolent 
person,  quite  willing  to  admit  boys  inside  the  hedge 
to  pick  up  nuts,  if  nuts  they  really  must  have. 
Then  I  turned  away.  To  my  astonishment,  they 
took  me  at  my  word,  followed  me  into  the  garden, 
and  calmly  began  to  pick  up  nuts  ;  while  I  withdrew, 
discomfited.  I  have  since  smiled  to  think  of  the 
affair  ;  but  I  recall  it  now  with  more  interest,  for 
the  sake  of  the  contrast  it  affords  between  middle- 
class  boys  and  labouring-class  boys  in  exactly 
similar  circumstances.  Where  the  former  behave 
confidently,  because  they  feel  safe,  the  latter  are 
overtaken  by  panic,  and  run  to  cover. 

In  this  light  another  curious  fact  about  the  village 
boys  gains  in  significance,  supposing  it  to  be  indeed 
a  fact.  From  the  nature  of  the  case,  proof  is  not 
possible,  but  I  have  a  strong  impression  that, 
excepting  to  go  to  the  town,  the  boys  of  the  village 
rarely,  if  ever,  stray  into  neighbouring  parishes,  or 
more  than  a  few  hundred  yards  away  from  their 
parents'  homes.  One  exception  must  be  noted.  In 
the  lonely  and  silent  fir-woods,  which  begin  in  the 
next  valley  and  stretch  away  over  ridge  and  dell 
for  some  miles  from  south-east  to  south-west,  one 
sometimes  comes  upon  a  group  of  village  children — 
little  boys  and  girls  together — filling  sacks  with  fir- 
cones, and  pushing  an  old  perambulator  to  carry  the 


172  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

load.  But  these  are  hardly  voluntary  expeditions  ; 
and  the  boys  are  always  very  small  ones,  while  the 
girls  are  in  charge.  The  bigger  boys,  of  from  ten 
to  thirteen  years  old,  do  not  go  into  the  woods. 
They  play  in  the  roads  and  pathways,  or  on  the 
corners  of  unused  land,  and  as  a  rule  within  sight 
or  call  of  home.  I  have  never  seen  any  of  them,  as 
I  have  occasionally  seen  middle-class  boys  from  the 
town,  rambling  far  afield  in  the  outlying  country, 
and  my  belief  is  that  they  would  be  considerably 
scared  to  find  themselves  in  such  unfamiliar  scenes. 
A-Ssuming  that  I  am  right,  yet  another  contrast 
presents  itself.  It  was  in  this  very  neighbourhood 
that  William  Cobbett,  as  a  little  boy,  played  off 
upon  the  huntsman  that  trick  of  revenge  which  he 
bragged  about  in  after-life.  For  five  or  six  miles 
across  country,  over  various  streams,  through  woods 
and  heaths  and  ploughed  upland  fields,  he  made  his 
way  all  alone,  dragging  his  red  herring,  perfectly 
confident  in  himself,  never  at  a  loss  to  know  where 
he  was,  but  thoroughly  familiar  with  the  lie  of  the 
land  most  suitable  for  his  game.  Of  course,  not 
many  boys  are  Cobbetts.  Yet  many  of  the  village 
boys,  even  now,  would  be  his  match  at  other  games. 
For  here,  on  the  shelving  sand-banks  beside  the 
stream,  I  have  seen  them  enjoying  rough-and-tumble 
romps  like  those  which  the  little  Cobbett  lived  to 
think  the  best  part  of  his  education  ;  and  they  do  it 
V.  ith  a  recklessness  which  even  he  can  scarce  have 
surpassed.     But  in  getting  about  the  country  they 


THE  HUMILIATED  173 

do  not  so  much  as  begin  to  emulate  him.  Of  course, 
it  is  true  that  now  they  have  to  spend  their  days  in 
school ;  true,  too,  that  the  enclosures  of  land  through- 
out the  neighbourhood  have  made  wandering  less 
easy  in  our  times  ;  nevertheless,  within  a  few  miles 
there  are  woods  and  heath-lands  in  plenty  for  adven- 
turous boys,  as  those  of  the  middle-class  are  aware  ; 
yet  those  of  the  village  never  risk  the  adventure. 
I  can  but  infer  that  they  are  afraid  of  something, 
and  a  moment's  thought  discloses  what  they  fear. 
Just  as  in  meddling  with  my  nut-tree,  so  every- 
where they  are  in  danger  of  trouble  with  people  of 
the  propertied  or  employing  kind ;  and  behind 
these  people  stands  the  policeman,  and  behind  the 
policeman  that  dim  object  of  dread  called  "  a 
summons."  This  it  is  that  keeps  the  village 
children  within  the  bounds  familiar  to  them,  where 
they  know  who  is  who,  and  what  property  belongs 
to  which  owner,  and  how  far  they  may  risk  doing 
mischief,  and  round  what  corners  they  may  scamper 
into  safety. 

The  caution  they  display  is  not  unnecessary. 
Somehow,  middle-class  boys  do  not  get  into  trouble 
with  the  law  ;  but  it  happens  not  infrequently  that 
a  few  little  villagers  are  "  pulled  up  "  before  a 
magistrate  for  trivial  acts  of  mischief,  and  if  the 
worst  punishment  inflicted  upon  them  is  a  shilling 
fine  and  costs,  which  their  parents  pay,  that  is 
enough  to  make  "  a  summons  "  a  very  dreadful 
thing  to  a  little  boy.     Out  of  eighteen  shillings  a 


174  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

week,  his  father  cannot  afford  "  a  shilling  and  costs  " 
for  a  piece  of  mischief,  as  the  little  boy  is  but  too 
likel}'  to  be  shown. 

Children's  memories  are  short,  however,  and  it 
takes  more  than  an  occasional  punishment  of  two 
or  three  to  inspire  in  them  all  a  timorousness  so 
instinctive  in  character  as  that  of  these  village 
boys.  At  the  back  of  it  there  must  be  a  more 
constant  and  pervasive  influence.  And,  to  come 
to  the  point  at  last,  I  think  that  the  boys  are 
swayed,  unwittingly,  by  an  attitude  in  the  grown- 
up people  with  whom  they  live — an  attitude  of 
habitual  wariness,  not  to  say  fear,  in  regard  to 
everything  connected  with  property  and  employers. 
This  is  what  makes  the  timidity  of  the  village 
urchins  interesting.  We  may  discern  in  it  the 
expression  of  a  feeling  prevalent  throughout  the 
cottages — an  unreasoned  but  convinced  distrust  of 
propertied  folk,  and  a  sense  of  being  unprotected 
and  helpless  against  their  privileges  and  power. 
Here,  accordingly,  is  one  direction  in  which  class 
distinction  has  seriously  affected  the  villagers.  It 
would  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  they  feel  like 
outlaws  ;  but  they  are  vaguely  aware  of  constraint 
imposed  upon  them  by  laws  and  prejudices  which 
are  none  too  friendly  to  people  of  their  kind.  One 
divines  it  in  their  treatment  of  the  village  police- 
man. There  is  probably  no  lonelier  man  in  the 
parish  than  the  constable.  Of  course  he  meets 
with   civility,   but   his   company  is   avoided.     One 


THE  HUMILIATED  175 

hears  him  mentioned  in  those  same  accents  of 
grudging  caution  which  the  villagers  use  in  speaking 
of  unfriendly  property-owners,  as  though  he  belonged 
to  that  alien  caste.  The  cottagers  feel  that  they 
themselves  are  the  people  whom  he  is  stationed  in 
the  valley  to  watch. 

They  feel  it ;  nor  can  it  be  denied  that  there  is 
some  excuse  for  the  feeling.  It  is  true  that  they 
far  outnumber  the  employers,  so  that,  other  things 
being  equal,  from  their  more  numerous  ranks  there 
would  naturally  come  a  larger  number  of  offenders 
against  the  law.  But  other  things  are  not  equal. 
The  proportion  is  not  kept.  Anyone  who  studies 
the  police-court  reports  in  the  local  papers  will  see 
that,  apart  from  cases  of  technical  offence,  like 
riding  a  bicycle  on  the  footpath,  or  keeping  a  dog 
without  a  licence,  practically  all  the  proceedings 
are  taken  in  defence  of  the  privileges  and  preju- 
dices of  the  employing  classes  against  the  employed 
classes.  Clearly  the  village  idea  is  not  wholly 
wrong.  In  theory,  the  policeman  represents  the 
general  public  ;  in  practice,  he  stands  for  middle- 
class  decorum  and  the  rights  of  property  ;  and  what 
the  people  say  is  roughly  true — there  is  one  law  for 
the  rich,  and  another  for  the  poor. 

But  it  is  only  roughly  true,  and  one  must  get  it  a 
little  more  exact  to  appreciate  the  position  in  which 
the  labouring-folk  stand.  I  am  not  disposed  to  say 
anything  here  against  the  administration  of  the  law 
by  the  justices,  when  offenders  are  brought  before 


176  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

them  ;  but  in  the  choice  or  detection  of  offenders  I 
must  point  out  that  a  great  deal  of  respect  of  persons 
is  shown.  Remember  what  that  old  man  said,  who 
would  have  liked  to  see  the  fir-woods  go  up  in 
flames  :  "  'Tis  all  fenced  in,  and  now  if  you  looks 
over  the  fence  you  be  locked  up  for  it."  That  was 
an  exaggeration,  of  course — a  sort  of  artistic  licence, 
a  piece  of  oratory  ;  yet  for  him  the  assertion  held 
more  than  a  grain  of  truth.  The  case  is  that  of  the 
two  sorts  of  boys  over  again.  Where  a  middle-class 
man  may  take  his  Sunday  walk  securely,  risking 
nothing  worse  than  being  civilly  turned  back  by  a 
game-keeper,  these  village  men  dare  not  go,  unless 
they  are  prepared  to  answer  a  summons  for  "  tres- 
passing for  an  unlawful  purpose,"  or  "in  search  of 
game."  Let  it  be  admitted  that  the  unlawful  pur- 
pose is  sometimes  proved  ;  at  least,  the  trespassers 
are  occasionally  found  to  have  rabbit-wires  con- 
cealed about  their  persons.  The  remarkable  thing, 
however,  is  that  they  should  have  been  searched 
in  order  to  make  this  discovery.  The  searching  may 
be  legal,  for  all  that  I  know  ;  yet  I  do  not  seem  to 
see  a  middle-class  man — a  shopkeeper  from  the 
town,  or  any  employer  of  labour — submitting  to  the 
process,  as  the  cowed  labouring  man  apparently 
does.  It  will  be  said  that  the  middle-class  man  is 
in  no  fear  of  such  an  outrage,  because  he  is  not 
suspect.  But  that  is  conceding  the  greater  part 
of  what  I  wish  to  demonstrate.  Rightly  or  wrongly, 
the  labouring  man  is  suspect.     A  distinction  of  caste 


THE  HUMILIATED  177 

is  made  against  him.  The  law,  which  pretends  to 
impartiaUty,  sets  him  in  a  lower  and  less  privileged 
place  than  his  employers  ;  and  he  knows  it.  In 
alleging  that  he  might  not  look  over  a  fence  with- 
out being  locked  up  for  it  my  old  acquaintance 
merely  overstated  a  palpable  truth.  People  of  his 
rank — cottage  people,  labouring  people — do,  indeed, 
not  dare  to  wander  in  country  places  anywhere  off 
the  public  roads. 

Much  more  might  be  said  on  the  same  lines. 
Whether  inevitably  or  no,  at  all  events  it  happens 
that  the  march  of  respectability  gives,  to  regula- 
tions which  may  be  quite  proper  in  themselves,  a 
very  strong  appearance  of  being  directed  against 
the  poorer  working  people.  No  doubt  it  is  right 
enough  that  the  brawling  of  the  "  drunk  and  dis- 
orderly "  on  the  highroads  should  be  checked  ;  the 
public  interest  demands  it  ;  yet  the  impression  con- 
veyed is  that  the  regulations  are  enforced  more  for 
the  pleasure  of  property-owners  than  anybody  else  ; 
that,  in  fact,  middle-class  respectability  has,  so  to 
speak,  made  this  law  especially  with  a  view  to  keep- 
ing the  working  classes  in  order.  I  am  not  urging 
that  in  this  there  is  any  substantial  grievance  ;  the 
offence  is  rarely  committed  by  others  than  labourers, 
and  by  them  too  often.  Yet  it  is  well  known  that, 
while  a  labourer  roystering  along  the  road  is  pounced 
upon  and  locked  up,  an  employer  the  worse  for 
drink  is  shepherded  home  from  his  hotel  by  the 
police,   and   the  affair  hushed   up.     From   circum- 


178  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

stances  like  these — and  they  are  very  common — a 
suspicion  is  bred  in  cottage  people  that  they  are 
not  in  good  odour  with  the  authorities.  The  law 
rather  tolerates  than  befriends  them.  They  are  not 
wanted,  are  not  regarded  as  equal  fellow-citizens 
with  the  well-to-do,  but  are  expected  to  be  quiet, 
or  to  keep  out  of  sight.  English  people  though 
they  are,  yet,  if  nobody  will  employ  them  so  that 
they  can  pay  rent  for  a  cottage,  they  have  no 
admitted  rights  in  England — unless  it  be  to  go  to 
the  workhouse  or  to  keep  moving  on  upon  the 
public  road.  In  endless  ways  the  sense  of  inequality 
is  impressed  upon  them.  I  opened  the  local  paper 
lately,  and  read  of  four  of  our  young  labourers 
accused  of  "  card-playing."  The  game  was 
"  Banker,"  the  policeman  told  the  magistrates — as 
if  gentlemen  were  likely  to  know  what  that  meant ! 
— and  he  had  caught  the  fellows  red-handed,  in 
some  as  yet  unfenced  nook  of  the  heath.  That  was 
how  they  were  in  fault.  They  should  not  have 
been  playing  where  they  could  be  seen,  in  the  open 
air ;  they  should  have  taken  their  objectionable 
game  out  of  sight,  into  some  private  house,  as  the 
middle-classes  do — and  as,  I  suppose,  the  police- 
man himself  must  have  done  in  his  time,  since  he 
knew  the  game.  Unfortunately  for  the  labouring 
men,  they  have  no  private  house  available  :  there 
is  no  room  for  a  card-party  in  their  cottages  ;  and 
thus  they  become  subject  to  laws  which,  as  they  do 
not   touch   the  property-owner,   seem   designed   to 


THE  HUMILIATED  179 

catch  especially  them.  For  another  example  of  the 
same  insinuation  of  inequality,  consider  the  local 
by-laws,  which  now  forbid  the  keeping  of  pigs  within 
a  considerable  distance  of  a  dwelling-house.  I  will 
not  say  that  the  villager  thinks  the  regulation  a 
wrong  one  ;  at  any  rate  he  understands  that  it  is 
excused  in  the  interests  of  public  health.  But  he 
also  knows  that  it  has  been  introduced  since  the 
arrival  of  middle-class  people  in  the  parish.  They 
came,  and  his  pigs  had  to  go  ;  so  that  in  his  eyes 
even  the  general  public  health  looks  like  the  health 
of  rich  residents  rather  than  of  poor  ones. 

The  people  display  little  resentment  ;  they  accept 
their  position  with  equanimity.  Nevertheless  it 
drives  them  in  upon  themselves.  Observing  the 
conditions,  and  yielding  to  them  as  to  something 
inherent  in  the  nature  of  things,  they  strive  to  keep 
out  of  the  way  of  the  superior  classes.  They  are 
an  aloof  population,  though  not  as  their  ancestors 
were.  They  are  fenced  out  from  the  country  ;  they 
cannot  with  security  go  into  enclosed  wood  or 
coppice  ;  the}^  must  keep  to  the  public  way,  and 
there  they  must  behave  so  as  not  to  disturb  the 
employing  classes.  Accordingly,  all  up  and  down 
the  valley  they  restrict  themselves  more  and  more 
soberly  to  their  gardens  and  cottages,  dreading  few 
things  so  much  as  a  collision  with  those  impersonal 
forces  which  seem  always  to  side  with  property  and 
against  people  like  them. 


XIII 

NOTICE  TO  QUIT 

It  might  be  thought  that  at  least  when  they  are  at 
home  the  people  would  be  untroubled  ;  yet  that  is 
not  the  case.  Influences  from  the  new  civilization 
reach  them  in  their  cottages,  and  the  intrusion  is 
but  the  more  searching  for  being  impersonal. 

It  is  borne  in  upon  the  senses  in  the  shape  of 
sights  and  sounds  proclaiming  across  the  valley 
that  the  village  is  an  altered  place,  that  the  modern 
world  is  submerging  it,  that  the  old  comfortable 
seclusion  is  gone.  Even  the  obscurity  of  winter 
nights  does  not  veil  that  truth  ;  for  where,  but  a 
few  years  ago,  the  quiet  depths  of  darkness  were 
but  emphasized  by  a  few  glimmering  cottage  lights, 
there  is  now  a  more  brilliant  sparkling  of  lit-up 
villa  windows,  while  northwards  the  sky  has  a  dull 
glare  from  new  road-lamps  which  line  the  ridge  on 
its  town  side.  As  for  the  daytime,  the  labourer 
can  hardly  look  from  his  door  without  seeing 
up  or  down  the  valley  some  sign  or  other  telling  of 
the  invasion  of  a  new  people,  unsympathetic  to  his 
order.  He  sees,  and  hears  too.  As  he  sweats  at 
his  gardening,  the  sounds  of  piano-playing  come  to 

i8o 


NOTICE  TO  QUIT  i8i 

him,  or  of  the  affected  excitement  of  a  tennis-party  ; 
or  the  braying  of  a  motor-car  informs  him  that  the 
rich  who  are  his  masters  are  on  the  road.  And 
though  the  man  should  go  into  his  cottage  and  shut 
the  door,  these  things  must  often  have  for  him  a 
sinister  meaning  which  he  cannot  so  easily  shut  out. 
There  is  a  vague  menace  in  them.  They  betoken 
to  all  the  labouring  people  that  their  old  home  is 
no  longer  quite  at  their  own  disposal,  but  is  at  the 
mercy  of  a  new  class  who  would  willingly  see  their 
departure. 

Perhaps  the  majority  do  not  feel  themselves  per- 
sonally threatened";  nevertheless,  the  situation  is 
disquieting  for  all.  Before  the  property-owners 
came,  and  while  still  the  population  was  homo- 
geneous, a  sort  of  continuity  in  the  life  of  the  valley 
impressed  itself  upon  one's  consciousness,  giving  a 
sense  of  security.  Here  amidst  the  heaths  a 
laborious  and  frugal  people,  wise  in  their  own 
fashion,  had  their  home  and  supplied  their  own 
wants.  Not  one  of  them  probably  thought  of  the 
significance  of  it  all,  or  understood  how  the  village 
traditions  were  his  inheritance  ;  not  one  considered 
what  it  meant  to  him  to  belong  to  the  little  group  of 
folk  and  be  independent  of  the  whims  of  strangers. 
Yet,  for  all  that,  there  was  comfort  in  the  situation. 
To  be  so  familiar  as  the  people  were  with  the  pecu- 
liarities of  the  valley,  to  appreciate  the  usefulness 
of  the  wide  heath-land,  to  value  the  weather,  to 
comprehend  at  a  glance  the  doings  of  the  neigh- 


i82  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

bours,  and  to  have  fellow-feeling  with  their  motives 
and  hopes  and  disappointments,  was  to  be  at  home 
most  intimately,  most  safely.  But  all  this  is  a 
thing  of  the  past.  To-day,  when  the  labourer  looks 
around,  much  of  what  he  sees  in  the  new  houses, 
roads,  fences,  and  so  on,  has,  indeed,  been  produced 
by  his  own  handiwork,  but  it  is  a  product  in  the 
enjoyment  of  which  he  has  no  share.  It  has 
nothing  to  do  with  him  and  his  people  ;  on  the 
contrary,  it  announces  the  break-up  of  the  tradi- 
tional industries  by  which  he  lived,  and  the  dis- 
integration of  the  society  of  which  he  was  a  member. 
It  follows  that  a  certain  suggestiveness  which  used 
to  dignify  the  home  pursuits  of  the  village  is  wanting 
to  them  now.  Instead  of  being  a  part  of  the  general 
thrift  of  the  valley — a  not  unworthy  contribution 
to  that  which,  in  the  sum,  was  all  important  to 
the  village  life — those  little  jobs  which  the  labourer 
does  at  home,  including  his  garden-work,  have  no 
relation  now  to  anything  save  his  private  necessities, 
because  now  the  dominant  interests  of  the  valley 
are  those  of  a  different  sort  of  people  who  care 
nothing  for  such  homely  things.  I  shall  be  told  that, 
after  all,  this  is  mere  sentiment.  But,  then,  half 
the  comfort  of  life  proceeds  from  those  large  vague 
sentiments  which  lift  a  man's  private  doings  up 
from  meanness  into  worthiness.  No  such  enrich- 
ment, however — no  dim  sense  of  sharing  in  a  pros- 
perous and  approved  existence — can  reward  the 
labourer's  industry  in  this  place  at  the  present  time. 


NOTICE  TO  QUIT  183 

The  clever  work  which,  in  the  village  of  his  equals, 
would  have  made  him  conspicuous  and  respected, 
now  stamps  him  as  belonging  to  the  least  important 
and  least  considered  section  of  the  population. 

Still,  I  will  waive  this  point.  Assuming — though 
it  is  much  to  assume — that  the  cottagers  have  no 
sentiment  in  the  matter,  there  are  other  circum- 
stances in  the  change  which  cannot  fail  to  disquiet 
them.  I  hinted  just  now  that  the  "  residential  " 
people  would  not  grieve  if  the  labouring  folk  took 
their  departure.  Now,  this  is  no  figure  of  speech. 
Although  it  is  likely  that  not  one  cottager  in  twenty 
has  any  real  cause  to  fear  removal,  there  has  been 
enough  disturbance  of  the  old  families  to  prove  that 
nobody  is  quite  safe.  Thus,  about  two  years  ago, 
when  some  cottage  property  near  to  a  new  "  resi- 
dence "  was  bought  up  by  the  owner  of  the  residence, 
it  was  commonly  said  that  he  had  bought  it  in  order 
to  get  rid  of  some  of  the  tenants,  whom  he  disliked 
for  neighbours.  Whether  or  not  that  was  the  real 
reason  I  do  not  know  ;  but  certain  it  is  that  two  of 
the  tenants  were  forthwith  turned  out — one  of  them 
after  twenty-five  years  of  occupancy.  It  was  not 
the  first  case  of  the  kind  in  the  village,  nor  yet  the 
last.  At  the  present  moment  I  know  of  three 
families  who  are  likely  ere  long  to  have  to  quit. 
They  live  in  a  block  of  cottages  just  beyond  the 
hedge  of  a  substantial  house — a  block  which,  it 
must  be  owned,  is  rather  an  eyesore  from  there, 
but  which  might  easily  be  turned  into  a  decent  villa. 


i84  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

and  is  actually  up  for  sale  for  that  purpose.  And 
the  dwellers  in  the  substantial  house  are  fervently 
hoping  that  a  buyer  of  the  cottages  will  soon  come 
forward.  They  have  told  me  so  themselves.  "  Of 
course,"  they  say,  "  we  shall  be  sorry  for  the  poor 
people  to  be  turned  out,  but  we  should  like  to  have 
nicer  neighbours,  of  our  own  sort."  So  in  their 
own  valley  these  English  people  are  not  safe  from 
molestation.  With  scarce  more  care  for  them  than 
would  be  shown  by  a  foreign  invader,  gentility  pur- 
sues its  ungentle  aims.  No  cottager  can  feel  quite 
secure.  A  dim  uncertainty  haunts  the  village,  with 
noticeable  effect  upon  everybody's  activities.  For 
a  sort  of  calculating  prudence  is  begotten  of  it,  which 
yet  is  not  thrift.  It  dissuades  the  people  from 
working  for  a  distant  future.  It  cuts  off  hope, 
benumbs  the  tastes,  paralyzes  the  aspiration  to 
beautify  the  home  which  may  any  day  have  to  be 
abandoned. 

And  in  the  long  run  this  effect,  from  which  all  the 
people  suffer  more  or  less  unconsciously,  is  more 
injurious  than  the  actual  misfortune  of  having  to 
move,  which,  after  all,  falls  upon  the  few  only. 
Not  that  I  would  make  light  of  that  calamity. 
Men  under  its  shadow  lie  awake  o'  nights,  worrying 
about  it.  While  I  am  writing  here,  in  a  cottage 
near  at  hand  there  is  a  man  under  notice  to  quit, 
who  is  going  through  all  the  pitiful  experiences — 
wondering  where  in  the  world  he  shall  take  his  wife 
and  children,  fearing  lest  it  should  have  to  be  into 


NOTICE  TO  QUIT  185 

some  backyard  in  the  town,  dreading  that  in  that 
case  he  will  be  too  far  away  from  his  day's  work  and 
have  to  give  it  up,  and  scheming  to  save  enough, 
from  the  cost  of  bread  and  boots,  to  pay  for  a  van 
to  move  his  furniture.  It  is  not  for  any  fault  that 
he  is  to  go.  And  indeed  he  is  being  well  treated  ; 
for  the  owner,  who  wants  to  occupy  the  cottage 
himself,  has  waited  months  because  the  man  cannot 
find  another  place.  Nevertheless  he  will  have  to 
go.  As  a  rule,  a  man  under  notice  to  quit  is  in  the 
position  of  standing  by  and  seeing  his  home,  and  his 
living,  and  the  well-being  of  his  family  sacrificed 
to  the  whim  of  a  superior  whom  he  dares  not 
oppose  ;  and  I  do  not  dream  of  arguing  that  that 
is  a  tolerable  position  for  any  Englishman  to  be  in. 
None  the  less,  it  is  true  that  these  acute  troubles, 
which  fall  upon  a  few  people  here  and  there,  and 
presently  are  left  behind  and  forgotten,  are  of  less 
serious  import  than  the  injury  to  the  village  at 
large,  caused  by  the  general  sense  of  insecurity. 

The  people's  tastes  are  benumbed,  I  said  :  their 
aspirations  to  beautify  their  homes  are  paralyzed 
by  the  want  of  permanence  in  their  condition.  To 
make  this  quite  plain,  it  would  be  only  needful  to 
look  at  the  few  cottages  in  the  valley  still  inhabited 
by  their  owners,  and  to  compare  them  with  those 
let  to  weekly  tenants.  It  seems  to  be  no  question 
of  income  that  makes  the  difference  between  the 
two.  In  several  cottages  very  well  known  to  me,  the 
owners  are  not  earning  more  than  fifteen  shillings  a 


i86  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

week — or,  including  the  value  of  the  cottage,  twenty 
shillings  ;  yet  the  places,  in  their  varied  ways,  all 
look  comfortable  and  comely.  Fruit-trees,  or  grape- 
vines, or  roses,  are  trained  to  the  walls.  The 
boundary  hedges  are  kept  well  trimmed ;  here  and 
there  survives  a  box  border — product  of  many  years 
of  clipping — or  even  a  yew-tree  or  two  fancifully 
shaped  out.  Here  and  there,  too,  leading  to  the 
cottage  door,  is  carefully  preserved  an  example  of 
those  neat  pavements  of  local  stone  once  so  charac- 
teristic of  this  countryside  ;  and  in  all  these  things 
one  sees  what  the  average  cottager  would  do  if  it 
were  worth  while — if  he  had  the  heart.  Since  none 
of  these  things,  however,  can  be  had  without  long 
attention,  or,  at  any  rate,  without  skill  carefully 
bestowed  in  due  season,  you  do  not  find  such  things 
decorating  the  homes  of  weekly  tenants.  The  cot- 
tages let  by  the  week  look  shabby,  slovenly,  dingy  ; 
the  hedges  of  the  gardens  are  neglected,  broken  down, 
stopped  up  with  anything  that  comes  to  hand.  If 
it  were  not  for  the  fruitful  and  well-tended  vegetable 
plots,  one  might  often  suppose  the  tenants  to  be 
ignorant  of  order,  degenerate,  brutalized,  material- 
ized, so  sordid  and  ugly  are  their  homes. 

Yet  it  is  not  for  want  of  taste  that  they  endure 
these  conditions.  Amidst  the  pitiful  shabbiness 
which  prevails  may  be  found  many  little  signs  that 
the  delight  in  comely  things  would  go  far  if  it 
dared.  There  is  hardly  a  garden  in  the  village,  I 
think,  which  does  not  contain  a  corner  or  a  strip 


NOTICE  TO  QUIT  187 

given  over  unthriftily,  not  to  useful  vegetables,  but 
to  daffodils  or  carnations  or  dahlias,  or  to  the  plants 
of  sweet  scent  and  pleasant  names,  like  rosemary 
and  lavender,  and  balm,  and  mignonette.  And  not 
seldom  a  weekly  tenant,  desirous  of  beauty,  goes 
farther,  takes  his  chance  of  losing  his  pains  ;  nails 
up  against  his  doorway  some  makeshift  structure  of 
fir-poles  to  be  a  porch,  sowing  nasturtiums  or  sweet- 
peas  to  cover  it  with  their  short-lived  beauty  ;  or  he 
marks  out  under  his  window  some  little  trumpery 
border  to  serve  instead  of  a  box-hedge  as  safeguard 
to  his  flowers.  One  of  those  families  whose  removal 
was  mentioned  above — turned  out  in  the  summer- 
time they  were,  with  loss  of  garden  crops — found 
refuge  in  a  hovel  which  stood  right  against  a  public 
pathway.  And,  although  it  was  an  encroachment, 
within  a  week  a  twelve-inch  strip  of  the  pathway 
was  dug  up  under  the  cottage  eaves,  and  fenced  in 
with  a  low  fencing  of  sticks  roughly  nailed  together. 
Within  this  narrow  space  were  planted  chrysanthe- 
mums rescued  from  the  previous  home  ;  and  when 
the  fence  gave  way — as  it  did  before  the  chrysanthe- 
mums flowered — big  stones  and  brickbats  were  laid 
in  its  place.  Considered  as  decoration,  the  result 
was  a  failure  ;  it  was  the  product  of  an  hour's  work 
in  which  despair  and  bitterness  had  all  but  killed 
the  people's  hope  ;  but  that  it  was  done  at  all  is 
almost  enough  to  prove  my  point.  For  further 
illustration  I  may  refer  again  to  that  other  man 
mentioned  above,  who  is  now  under  notice  to  leave 


i88  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

his  cottage.  Last  year  he  was  happy  in  tending 
four  or  five  rose-trees  which  he  had  been  allowed 
to  bring  home  from  the  rubbish-heap  of  his  em- 
ployer's garden.  I  remember  that  when  he  showed 
them  to  me,  gloating  over  them,  he  tried  to  excuse 
himself  to  me  for  neglecting  his  potatoes  in  their 
favour,  and  I  did  my  best  to  encourage  him  and  puff 
him  up  with  pride.  But  it  was  of  no  use.  This 
summer  he  is  neglecting  his  roses,  and  is  wondering 
if  his  potatoes  will  be  ripe  enough  for  digging  before 
he  is  obliged  to  move. 

With  such  things  going  on,  it  is  not  wonderful 
that  the  people  live  shabbily,  meanly,  out  at  elbows. 
Tastes  so  handicapped  as  theirs  make  no  headway, 
and,  though  not  dying,  sink  into  disuse.  The 
average  cottager  learns  to  despise  pleasantness  and 
to  concentrate  upon  usefulness.  His  chief  pride 
now  is  in  his  food-crops,  which,  if  not  eaten,  can  be 
turned  into  money.  Of  course,  these  have  their 
beauty — not  undiscerned  by  the  labourer — but  they 
are  not  grown  for  that  end,  and  the  thriftier  the  man, 
the  less  time  to  the  consideration  of  beauty  will  he 
give.  It  is,  besides,  an  imprudence  to  make  a 
cottage  look  comely,  now  that  covetous  eyes  are 
upon  the  valley  and  the  people's  position  there  has 
grown  insecure. 

Does  it  seem  a  slight  thing  ?  Whatever  the 
practical  importance  of  it,  the  extent  of  change 
involved  in  this  hopeless  attitude  of  the  villagers 


NOTICE  TO  QUIT  189 

towards    their    home-places    must    not    be    under- 
rated ;  for  if  it  could  be  viewed  in  sharp  perspective 
it  would  appear  considerable  enough.     Let  us  note 
the  transitions.     First  the  straying  squatters  settled 
here,  to  cultivate  chosen  spots  of  the  valley  and 
reduce  them  to  order.     They  were  not  wedded  to 
the  place  ;  only  if  it  gave  them  a  chance  of  getting 
food  and  shelter  were  they  likely  to  remain.     Soon, 
however,  that  first  uncertainty  was  forgotten.  Their 
peasant  customs  fitted  the  environment  ;  there  was 
no  danger  of  molestation  ;  already  to  their  children 
the  valley  began  to  feel  like  a  permanent  home.     As 
years  went  on  that  feeling  deepened,  wrapped  the 
people  round  in  an  unthought-of  security,  and  per- 
mitted them,   here  and  there,   to  go   beyond   the 
necessary  peasant   crafts   and  think  of  what   was 
pleasant    as    well    as    necessary.     Gardens    were 
trimmed  into  beauty,  grape-vines  were  grown  for 
the  sake  of  wine-making,  and  bees  were  kept  for  the 
sake  of  honey  and  mead.     In  the  cottages  decent 
furniture   and   implements   began   to   accumulate  ; 
the   women   decorated    their   men's    blouses    with 
pretty   smocking;   the   children   were   taught   old- 
fashioned   lore   because   it   was   old-fashioned   and 
their  inheritance  ;  time-honoured  customs  of  May- 
day and  of  Christmas  were  not  ignored.     So  during 
a  few  generations  the  old  country  thrift  and  its 
simple  civilization  were  kept  alive,  until  the  loss  of 
the  common  made  the  old  thrift  no  longer  possible 
and  introduced  the  new.     Lastly,  and  within  recent 


igo  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

years,  a  new  population  has  come,  taking  possession, 
with  a  new  civilization  which  is  by  no  means  simple  ; 
and  now  once  more  a  sense  of  unsettledness  is  upon 
the  cottagers,  although  for  the  most  part  they 
remain  here.  It  is,  however,  an  unsettledness  very 
unlike  that  of  the  earlier  time.  Instead  of  hope 
in  it  there  is  anxiety  ;  instead  of  striking  deeper 
root  in  the  valley,  the  people's  hold  grows  shallower. 
The  agreeable  peasant  arts  have  faded  out  accord- 
ingly. The  whole  peasant  mode  of  life  is  all  but 
forgotten.  To-day  we  have  here  not  a  distinct 
group  of  people  living  by  customs  which  their 
singular  circumstances  justify,  but  numerous  im- 
poverished families  living  provisionally  from  hand 
to  mouth,  because  of  the  possibility  of  further 
changes  to  be  thrust  upon  them.  While  they  wait 
they  still  work,  yet  without  pleasantness  in  their 
lives.  As  their  homes  by  neglect  have  grown 
shabby  and  squalid,  so  their  industry  has  become 
calculating  and  sordid.  Little  remains  to  them  now 
but  their  own  good  temper  to  keep  their  life  from 
being  quite  joyless. 


IV 

THE  RESULTING  NEEDS 


XIV 

THE  INITIAL  DEFECT 

Keeping  pace  with  the  alterations  in  their  circum- 
stances, a  great  mental  and  spiritual  destitution  has 
made  its  appearance  amongst  the  labouring  people. 
I  say  "  has  made  its  appearance  "  because  it  cannot 
be  wholly  attributed  to  the  changes  we  have  been 
discussing.  Those  changes  have  done  their  part, 
certainly.  Obliterating  the  country  crafts  and 
cults,  breaking  down  the  old  neighbourly  feelings, 
turning  what  was  an  interesting  economy  into  an 
anxious  calculation  of  shillings  and  pence,  and 
reducing  a  whole  village  of  people  from  independence 
to  a  position  bordering  on  servility,  the  introduction 
of  a  new  system  of  thrift  must  bear  the  greater 
share  of  the  blame  for  the  present  pHght  of  the 
labourers.  Nevertheless,  their  destitution — their 
mental  and  spiritual  destitution — has  its  roots 
deeper  down,  and  springs  from  a  grave  defect  which 
was  inherent  in  the  peasant  system.  It  is  time  to 
recognize  that  fact.  In  many  ways  the  folk- 
civilization  had  served  the  cottagers  excellently. 
They  had  grown  up  hardy  and  self-reliant  under  its 
influence ;   clever   with   their   hands,    shrewd   with 

193  ^3 


194  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

their  heads,  kindly  and  cheerful  in  their  temper. 
But  one  can  see  now  that  all  this  had  been  bought 
very  dear.  To  set  against  the  good  qualities  that 
came  to  light  there  was  a  stifling  of  other  qualities 
which  were  equally  good,  but  had  no  chance  of 
development  at  all  under  the  peasant  thrift. 

Especially  on  the  side  of  mental  activity  was  the 
people's  natural  power  cramped.  I  do  not  mean 
that  they  were  stupid  ;  it  would  be  an  error  of  the 
first  magnitude  to  suppose  anything  of  the  sort. 
But  the  concentration  of  their  faculties  on  their 
rural  doings  left  them  childish  and  inefficient  in  the 
use  of  their  brains  for  other  purposes.  Mention  has 
been  made  of  the  "  fatalism  "  which  still  prevails 
in  the  village  outlook  ;  but  fatalism  is  too  respectable 
a  name  for  that  mere  absence  of  speculative  thought 
which  was  characteristic  of  the  peasant  kind  of 
people  I  have  known.  The  interest  of  their  daily 
pursuits  kept  their  minds  busy  upon  matters  obvious 
to  the  senses,  while  attention  to  opinions  and  ideas 
v/as  discouraged.  For  this  reason  the  older  men  and 
women  had  seldom  if  ever  indulged  in  fancies  or 
day-dreams,  or  troubled  about  theories  or  first 
principles  ;  and  until  lately  I  might  have  said  the 
same  of  the  younger  ones  too.  As  for  watching 
themselves — watching  and  checking  off  the  actions 
of  their  own  intelligence — it  was  what  they  never 
did.  A  sentiment  might  arise  in  them  and  mellow 
all  their  temper,  and  they  would  not  notice  it.  The 
inner  meaning  ol  things  concerned  them  very  little. 


THE  INITIAL  DEFECT  195 

Their  conception  of  cause  and  effect,  or  of  the  con- 
stancy of  nature,  was  rudimentary.  "  Ninety-nine 
times  out  of  a  hundred,"  said  an  old  bricklayer  of 
the  village,  baffled  by  some  error  in  his  work — 
"  ninety-nine  times  out  of  a  hundred  it'll  come 
right  same  as  you  sets  it  out,  but  not  always." 
Puzzles  v/ere  allowed  to  be  puzzling,  and  left  so  ; 
or  the  first  explanation  was  accepted  as  final. 
The  "  mistis  in  March  "  sufficiently  accounted  for 
the  "  frostis  in  May."  Mushrooms  would  only  grow 
when  the  moon  was  "  growing."  Even  with  regard 
to  personal  troubles  the  people  were  still  as  un- 
speculative  as  ever.  Were  they  poor,  or  ill  ?  It 
m.erely  happened  so,  and  that  settled  it.  Or  were 
they  in  cheerful  spirits  ?  Why,  so  they  were  ;  and 
what  more  could  be  said  ? 

It  was  largely  this  simplicity  of  their  mental 
processes  that  made  the  older  people  so  companion- 
able. They  were  unaccustomed  to  using  certain 
powers  of  the  brain  which  modern  people  use  ;  nay, 
they  were  so  unaware  of  that  use  as  to  be  utterly 
unsuspicious  of  such  a  thing.  To  be  as  little  psycho- 
logical as  possible,  we  may  say  that  a  modern 
man's  thought  goes  on  habitually  at  two  main  levels. 
On  the  surface  are  the  subjects  of  the  moment— 
that  endless  procession  of  things  seen  or  heard  or 
spoken  of  which  make  up  the  outer  world  ;  and  here 
is  where  intercourse  with  the  old  type  of  villager 
was  easy  and  agreeable.  But  below  that  surface 
the  modern  mind  has  a  habit  of  interpreting  these 


196  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

phenomena  by  general  ideas  or  abstract  principles, 
or  referring  them  to  imaginations  all  out  of  sight  and 
unmentioned  ;  and  into  this  region  of  thought  the 
peasant's  attention  hardly  penetrated  at  all.  Given 
a  knowledge  of  the  neighbourhood,  therefore,  it  was 
easy  to  keep  conversation  going  with  a  man  of  this 
kind.  If  you  could  find  out  the  set  of  superficial 
or  practical  subjects  in  which  he  was  interested,  and 
chatter  solely  on  that  plane,  all  went  well.  But  if 
you  dipped  underneath  it  amongst  fancies  or  genera- 
lizations, difficulties  arose.  The  old  people  had  no 
experience  there,  and  were  out  of  their  depth  in  a 
moment.  And  yet — I  must  repeat  it — we  should 
be  entirely  wrong  to  infer  that  they  were  naturally 
stupid,  unless  a  man  is  to  be  called  stupid  because 
he  does  not  cultivate  every  one  of  his  inborn  facul- 
ties. In  that  sense  we  all  have  our  portion  in 
stupidity,  and  the  peasant  was  no  worse  than  the 
rest  of  us.  His  particular  deficiency  was  as  I  have 
described  it,  and  may  be  fully  explained  by  his 
mode  of  life.  For  in  cow-stall  or  garden  or  cottage, 
or  in  the  fields  or  on  the  heaths,  the  claim  of  the 
moment  was  all-absorbing  ;  and  as  he  hurried  to 
thatch  his  rick  before  the  rain  came,  or  to  get  his 
turfs  home  by  nightfall,  the  ideas  which  thronged 
about  his  doings  crowded  out  ideas  of  any  other 
sort.  Or  if,  not  hurrying,  his  mind  went  dreamy, 
it  was  still  of  peasant  things  that  he  dreamed.  Of 
what  he  had  been  told  when  he  was  a  child,  or  what 
he  had  seen  for  himself  in  after-life,  his  memory 


THE  INITIAL  DEFECT  197 

was  full ;  and  every  stroke  of  reap-hook  or  thrust 
of  spade  had  power  to  entice  his  intellect  along  the 
familiar  grooves  of  thought — grooves  which  lie  on 
the  surface  and  are  unconnected  with  any  systema- 
tized channels  of  idea-work  underneath. 

So  the  strong  country  life  tyrannized  over  country 
brains,  and,  apart  from  the  ideas  suggested  by  that 
life,  the  peasant  folk  had  few  ideas.  Their  minds 
lacked  freedom  ;  there  was  no  escape  from  the 
actual  environment  into  a  world  either  of  imagina- 
tion or  of  more  scientific  understanding.  Nor  did 
this  matter  a  great  deal,  so  long  as  the  environment 
remained  intact.  In  the  absence  of  what  we  call 
"  views  " — those  generalizations  about  destiny  or 
goodness,  or  pleasure,  or  what  not,  by  which  we 
others  grope  our  way  through  life — the  steady 
peasant  environment,  so  well  known  and  containing 
so  few  surprises,  was  itself  helpful,  precisely  because 
it  was  so  well  known.  If  a  man  would  but  give 
shrewd  attention  to  his  practical  affairs,  it  was 
enough  ;  a  substitute  for  philosophy  was  already 
made  for  him,  to  save  him  the  trouble  of  thinking 
things  out  for  himself.  His  whole  mental  activity 
proceeded,  unawares,  upon  a  substratum  of  cus- 
tomary understanding,  which  belonged  to  the  village 
in  general,  and  did  not  require  to  be  formulated,  but 
was  accepted  as  axiomatic  by  all.  "  Under- 
standing "  is  the  best  word  I  can  find  for  it.  It 
differed  from  a  philosophy  or  a  belief,  because  it 
contained  no  abstract  ideas  ;  thinking  or  theorizing 


198  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

had  no  part  in  it  ;  it  was  a  sheer  perception  and 
recognition  of  the  circumstances  as  they  were. 
The  people  might  dispute  about  details ;  but  the 
general  object  to  be  striven  for  in  life  admitted  of 
no  disagreement.  Without  giving  it  a  thought, 
they  knew  it.  There  lay  the  valley  before  them, 
with  their  little  hotaesteads,  their  cattle,  their 
gardens,  the  common  ;  and  connected  with  all  these 
things  a  certain  old-established  series  of  industries 
was  recognized,  leading  up  to  a  well-known  pros- 
perity. That  perception  was  their  philosophy. 
The  environment  was  understood  through  and 
through.  And  this  common  knowledge,  existing 
apart  from  any  individual  in  particular,  served 
every  individual  instead  of  a  set  of  private  opinions 
of  his  own.  To  get  away  from  it  was  impossible, 
for  it  was  real  knowledge ;  a  man's  practical  thoughts 
had  to  harmonize  with  it  ;  supported  by  it,  he  was 
saved  the  trouble  of  thinking  things  out  in  "  sys- 
tems "  ;  and  in  fact  it  was  a  better  guide  to  him 
than  thought-out  systems  could  have  been,  because 
generations  of  experience  had  fitted  it  so  perfectly 
to  the  narrow  environment  of  the  valley.  So  long, 
therefore,  as  the  environment  remained  unaltered, 
the  truth  that  the  people's  minds  held  few  ideas 
upon  other  subjects,  and  had  developed  no  method 
of  systematic  thinking,  was  veiled. 

But  it  has  become  plain  enough  now  that  the  old 
environment  is  gone.  The  new  thrift  has  laid  bare 
the  nakedness  of  the  land.     It  has  found  the  villagers 


THE  INITIAL  DEFECT  199 

unequipped  with  any  efficient  mental  habits  appro- 
priate to  the  altered  conditions,  and  shown  them  to 
be  at  a  loss  for  interesting  ideas  in  other  directions. 
They  cannot  see  their  way  any  longer.  They  have 
no  aims  ;  at  any  rate,  no  man  is  sure  what  his  own 
aims  ought  to  be,  or  has  any  confidence  that  his 
neighbours  could  enlighten  him.  Life  has  grown 
meaningless,  stupid ;  an  apathy  reigns  in  the  village 
— a  dull  waiting,  with  nothing  in  particular  for  which 
to  wait. 


XV 

THE  OPPORTUNITY 

Amongst  so  many  drawbacks  to  the  new  thrift,  one 
good  thing  that  it  has  brought  to  the  villagers,  in 
the  shape  of  a  little  leisure,  gives  us  the  means  of 
seeing   in  more  detail   how  destitute  of  interests 
their  life  has  become.     It  must  be  owned  that  the 
leisure  is  very  scanty.     It  is  so  obscured,  too,  by 
the  people's  habit  of  putting  themselves  to  produc- 
tive work  in  it  that  I  have   sometimes  doubted  if 
any  benefit  of  the  kind  actually  filtered  down  into 
their  overburdened  lives.     Others,  however,  with  a 
more  business-like  interest  in  the  matter  than  mine, 
have  recognized  that  a  new  thing  has  come  into  the 
country  labourer's  life,  although  they  do  not  speak 
of  it  as  "  leisure."     Mere  wasted  time  is  what  it 
looks  like  to  them.     Thus,   not  long  ago,   an  ac- 
quaintance who  by  no  means  shares  my  views  of 
these  matters  was  deploring  to  me  the  degenerate 
state,  as  he  conceived  it,  of  the  labourers  on  certain 
farms  in  which  he  is  interested,  a  few  miles  away 
from  this  valley.     The  men,  he  said,  holding  their 
cottages  as  one  of  the  conditions  of  employment  on 
the  farms,  had  grown  idle,  and  were  neglecting  the 
cottage  gardens — were  neglecting  them  so  seriously 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  201 

that,  in  the  interests  of  the  estate,  he  had  been 
obliged  to  complain  to  the  farmers.  Upon  my 
asking  for  explanations  of  a  disposition  so  unlike 
that  of  the  labourers  in  this  parish,  many  of  whom 
are  not  content  with  their  cottage  gardens,  but  take 
more  ground  when  they  can  get  it,  my  friend  said 
deliberately :  "  I  think  food  is  too  cheap.  With  their 
fifteen  shillings  a  week  the  men  can  buy  all  they  want 
without  working  for  it ;  and  the  result  is  that  they 
waste  their  evenings  and  the  gardens  go  to  ruin." 

With  this  remarkable  explanation  I  am  glad  to 
think  that  I  have  nothing  to  do  here.  The  point  is 
that,  according  to  a  business  man  with  lifelong 
experience  in  rural  matters,  country  labourers  now 
have  time  at  their  disposal.  Without  further  ques- 
tion we  miay  accept  it  as  true  ;  the  cheapening  of 
produce  has  made  it  just  possible  for  labouring  men 
to  live  without  occupying  every  available  hour  in 
productive  work,  and  in  this  one  respect  they  do 
profit  a  little  by  those  innovations — the  use  of 
machinery,  the  division  of  labour,  and  the  free 
importation  of  foreign  goods — which  have  replaced 
the  antiquated  peasant  economy.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary nowadays — not  absolutely  necessary — for  the 
labourer,  when  his  day's  wage-earning  is  done,  to 
fall  to  work  again  in  the  evening  in  order  to  produce 
commodities  for  his  own  use.  Doubtless  if  he  does 
so  he  is  the  better  off ;  but  if  he  fails  to  do  so  he 
may  still  live.  While  he  has  been  earning  money 
av;ay  from  home  during  the  day,  other  men  he  has 


202  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

never  met,  in  countries  he  has  never  seen,  have  been 
providing  for  him  the  things  that  he  will  want  at 
home  in  the  evening  ;  and  if  these  things  have  not 
been  actually  brought  to  his  door,  they  are  waiting 
for  him  in  shops,  whence  he  may  get  them  in  ex- 
change for  the  money  he  has  earned.     Some  of  them, 
too,  are  of  a  quality  such  as,  with  the  utmost  skill 
and  industry,   he  never  could  have  produced  for 
himself.     Modern   artificial   light   provides   an   ex- 
ample.    Those  home-made  rushlights  eulogized  by 
Gilbert  White  and  by  Cobbett  may  have  been  well 
enough  in  their  way,  but  cheap  lamps  and  cheap 
paraffin  have  given  the  villagers  their  winter  even- 
ings.    At  a  cost  of  a  few  halfpence  earned  in  the 
course  of  the  day's  work  a  cottage  family  may  pro- 
long their  winter  day  as  far  into  the  night  as  they 
please ;    and   that,    without    feeling  that    they  are 
wasting  their  store  of  light,  and  without  being  under 
necessity  of  spending  the  rescued  hours  at  any  of 
those  thrifty  tasks  which  alone  would  have  justified 
peasant  folk  in  sitting  up  late.      They  have  the 
evening  to  use  at  their  pleasure. 

If  it  is  said,  as  my  friend  interested  in  land  seemed 
to  suggest,  that  they  do  not  know  how  to  use  it,  I 
am  not  concerned  to  disagree.  In  fact,  that  is  my 
own  text.  On  an  evening  last  winter,  having  occa- 
sion to  ask  a  neighbour  to  do  me  a  service,  I  knocked 
at  his  cottage  door,  and  was  invited  in.  The  un- 
shaded lamp  on  the  table  cast  a  hard,  strong  light  on 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  203 

the  appointments  of  the  room,  and  in  its  glare  the 
family — namely,  the  man,  with  his  wife,  his  mother, 
and  his  sister — were  sitting  round  the  fire.  On  the 
table,  which  had  no  cloth,  the  remains  of  his  hot 
tea-supper  were  not  cleared  away — the  crust  of  a 
loaf,  a  piece  of  bacon-rind  on  a  plate,  and  a  teacup 
showed  what  it  had  been.  But  now  he  had  finished, 
and  was  resting  in  his  shirt-sleeves,  nursing  his 
baby.  In  fact,  the  evening's  occupation  had  begun. 
The  family,  that  is  to  say,  had  two  or  three  hours 
to  spend — for  it  was  but  little  past  seven  o'clock — 
and  nothing  to  do  but  to  sit  there  and  gossip.  An 
innocent  pastime  that  ;  I  have  no  fault  to  find  with 
it,  excepting  that  it  had  the  appearance  of  being 
very  dull.  The  people  looked  comfortable,  but 
there  was  no  liveliness  in  them.  No  trace  of  vivacity 
in  their  faces  gave  the  smallest  reason  to  suppose 
that  rny  coming  had  interrupted  any  enjoyment  of 
the  evening.  A  listless  contentment  in  being  at 
home  together,  with  the  day's  work  done  and  a  fire 
to  sit  by,  was  what  was  suggested  by  the  whole 
bearing  of  the  family.  Their  leisure  was  of  no  use 
to  them  for  recreation — for  "  making  themselves 
anew,"  that  is — or  for  giving  play  to  faculties  which 
had  lain  quiet  during  the  day's  work.  At  the  time, 
however,  I  saw  nothing  significant  in  all  this.  It  was 
just  what  other  cottage  interiors  had  revealed  to  me 
on  other  winter  evenings.  The  surprising,  the  un- 
expected thing  would  have  been  to  find  the  little 
spell  of  leisure  being  joyfully  used. 


204  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

Shall  we  leave  the  matter  there  then  ?  If  we  do, 
we  shall  overlook  the  one  feature  in  the  situation 
that  most  particularly  deserves  attention.  For 
suppose  that  the  cottagers  in  general  do  not  know 
what  to  do  with  their  leisure,  yet  we  must  not  argue 
that  therefore  they  do  not  prize  it.  Dull  though 
they  may  seem  in  it,  tedious  though  I  believe  they 
often  find  it,  nevertheless  there  proceeds  from  it  a 
subtle  satisfaction,  as  at  something  gained,  in  the 
liberty  to  behave  as  they  like,  in  the  vague  sense 
that  for  an  hour  or  two  no  further  effort  is  demanded 
of  them.  Yawning  for  bed,  half  sick  of  the  evening, 
somewhere  in  the  back  of  their  consciousness  they 
feel  that  this  respite  from  labour,  which  they  have 
won  by  the  day's  work,  is  a  privilege  not  to  be  thrown 
away.  It  is  more  to  them  than  a  mere  cessation 
from  toil,  a  mere  interval  between  more  important 
hours  ;  it  is  itself  the  most  important  part  of  the 
day — the  part  to  which  all  the  rest  has  led  up. 

Nothing  of  the  sort,  I  believe,  was  experienced 
in  the  village  in  earlier  times.  Leisure,  and  the 
problem  of  using  it,  are  new  things  there.  I  do  not 
mean  that  the  older  inhabitants  of  the  valley  never 
had  any  spare  time.  There  were,  doubtless,  many 
hours  when  they  "  eased  off,"  to  smoke  their  pipes 
and  drink  their  beer  and  be  jolly  ;  only,  such  hours 
were,  so  to  speak,  a  by-product  of  living,  not  the 
usual  and  expected  consummation  of  every  day- 
Accepting  them  by  no  means  unwillingly  when  they 
occurred,  the  folk  still  were  wont  normally  to  reduce 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  205 

them  to  a  minimum,  or  at  least  to  see  that  they 
did  not  occur  too  often  ;  as  if  spare  time,  after  all, 
was  only  a  time  of  waiting  until  work  could  be 
conveniently  resumed.  So  lightly  was  it  valued 
that  most  villagers  cut  it  short  by  the  simple  ex- 
pedient of  going  to  bed  at  six  or  seven  o'clock. 
But  then,  in  their  peasant  way,  they  enjoyed  inter- 
esting days.  The  work  they  did,  although  it  left 
their  reasoning  and  imaginative  powers  unde- 
veloped, called  into  play  enough  subtle  knowledge 
and  skill  to  make  their  whole  day's  industry  grati- 
fying. What  should  they  want  of  leisure  ?  They 
wanted  rest,  in  which  to  recover  strength  for  taking 
up  again  the  interesting  business  of  living  ;  but  they 
approached  their  daily  life — their  pig-keeping  and 
bread-making,  their  mowing  and  thatching  and 
turf-cutting  and  gardening,  and  the  whole  round  of 
country  tasks — almost  in  a  welcoming  spirit,  match- 
ing themselves  against  its  demands  and  proving 
their  manhood  by  their  success.  But  the  modern 
labourer's  employment,  reduced  as  it  is  to  so  much 
greater  monotony,  and  carried  on  for  a.  master 
instead  of  for  the  man  himself,  is  seldom  to  be 
approached  in  that  spirit.  The  money- valuation 
of  it  is  the  prime  consideration;  it  is  a  commercial 
affair  ;  a  clerk  going  to  his  office  has  as  much  reason 
as  the  labourer  to  welcome  the  morning's  call  to 
work.  As  in  the  clerk's  case,  so  in  the  labourer's  : 
the  act  or  fruition  of  living  is  postponed  during  the 
hours  in  which  the  living  is  being  earned  ;  between 


2o6  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

the  two  processes  a  sharp  line  of  division  is  drawn ; 
and  it  is  not  until  the  clock  strikes,  and  the  leisure 
begins,  that  a  man  may  remember  that  he  is  a  man, 
and  try  to  make  a  success  of  living.  Hence  the 
truth  of  what  I  say  :  the  problem  of  using  leisure  is 
a  new  one  in  the  village.  Deprived,  by  the  economic 
changes  which  have  gone  over  them,  of  any  keen 
enjoyment  of  life  while  at  work,  the  labourers  must 
make  up  for  the  deprivation  when  work  is  over,  or 
not  at  all.  Naturally  enough,  in  the  absence  of  any 
traditions  to  guide  them,  they  fail.  But  self-respect 
forbids  the  old  solution.  To  feed  and  go  to  bed 
would  be  to  shirk  the  problem,  not  to  solve  it. 

So  much  turns  upon  a  proper  appreciation  of  these 
truths  that  it  will  be  well  to  illustrate  them  from 
real  life,  contrasting  the  old  against  the  new. 
Fortunately  the  means  are  available.  Modernized 
people  acquainted  with  leisure  are  in  every  cottage, 
while  as  for  the  others,  the  valley  still  contains  a 
few  elderly  men  whose  lives  are  reminiscent  of  the 
earlier  day.  Accordingly  I  shall  finish  this  chapter 
by  giving  an  account  of  one  of  these  latter,  so  that 
in  the  next  chapter  the  different  position  of  the 
present-day  labourers  may  be  more  exactly  under- 
stood. 

The  man  I  have  in  mind — I  will  rename  him 
Turner — belongs  to  one  of  the  old  families  of  the 
village,  and  inherited  from  his  father  a  cottage  and 
an  acre  or  so  of  ground — probably  mortgaged — 
together  with  a  horse  and  cart,  a  donkey,  a  cow  or 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  207 

two,  a  few  pigs,  and  a  fair  stock  of  the  usual  rustic 
tools  and  implements.  Unluckily  for  him,  he  in- 
herited no  traditions — there  were  none  in  his  family 
— to  teach  him  how  to  use  these  possessions  for 
making  a  money  profit  ;  so  that,  trying  to  go  on  in 
the  old  way,  as  if  the  world  were  not  changing  all 
round  him,  he  m.uddled  away  his  chances,  and  by 
the  time  that  he  was  fifty  had  no  property  left  that 
was  worth  any  creditor's  notice.  The  loss,  however, 
came  too  late  to  have  much  effect  on  his  habits. 
And  now  that  he  is  but  the  weekly  tenant  of  a  tiny 
cottage,  and  owns  no  more  than  a  donkey  and  cart 
and  a  few  rabbits  and  fowls,  he  is  just  the  same  sort 
of  man  that  he  used  to  be  in  prosperity — thriftless 
from  our  point  of  view,  but  from  the  peasant  point 
of  view  thrifty  enough,  good-tempered  too,  generous 
to  a  fault,  indifferent  to  discomforts,  as  a  rule  very 
hard-working,  yet  apparently  quite  unacquainted 
with  fatigue. 

He  gets  his  living  now  as  a  labourer  ;  but,  unlike 
his  neighbours,  he  seems  by  no  means  careful  to 
secure  constant  employment.  The  regularity  of  it 
would  hardly  suit  his  temper  ;  he  is  too  keenly 
desirous  of  being  his  own  master.  And  his  own 
master  he  manages  to  be,  in  a  certain  degree.  From 
those  who  employ  him  he  obtains  some  latitude  of 
choice,  not  alone  as  to  the  hours  of  the  day  when  he 
shall  serve  them,  but  even  as  to  the  days  of  the 
week.  I  have  heard  him  protest  :  "  Monday  you 
says  for  me  to  come.     Well,  I  dunno  about  Monday 


2o8  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

— if  Tuesday'd  suit  ye  as  well  ?  I  wants  to  do  so- 
and-so   o'   Monday,   if   'tis  fine.     You  see,   there's 

Mr.  S I  bin  so  busy  I  en't  bin  anear  him  this 

week  for  fear  he  should  want  me  up  there.  I  knows 
his  grass  wants  cuttin'.  But  I  'xpects  I  shall  ha' 
to  satisfy  'n  Monday,  or  else  p'raps  he  won't  like  it." 
Sometimes  he  takes  a  day  for  his  own  affairs,  carting 
home  hop-bine  in  his  donkey-cart,  or  getting  heath 
for  some  thatching  job  that  has  been  offered  to  him. 
On  these  terms,  while  he  finds  plenty  to  do  in 
working  intermittently  for  four  or  five  people  in  the 
parish,  he  preserves  a  freedom  of  action  which 
probably  no  other  labourer  in  the  village  enjoys. 
Few  others  could  command  it.  But  Turner's 
manner  is  so  ingratiating  that  people  have  a  personal 
liking  for  him,  and  it  is  certain  that  his  strength  and 
all-round  handiness  make  of  him  an  extremely  useful 
man.  Especially  does  his  versatility  commend  him. 
Others  in  the  village  are  as  strong  as  he  and  as 
active  and  willing,  but  there  are  not  now  many 
others  who  can  do  such  a  number  of  different  kinds 
of  work  as  he  can,  with  so  much  experienced 
readiness. 

Among  his  clients  (for  that  is  a  more  fitting  word 
for  them  than  "  employers  ")  there  are  two  or  three 
residents  with  villa  gardens,  and  also  two  of  those 
"  small-holders  "  who,  more  fortunate  than  himself 
(though  not  more  happy,  I  fancy),  have  managed  to 
cling  to  the  little  properties  which  their  fathers 
owned.     Turner,  therefore,  comes  in  for  a  number 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  209 

of  jobs  extraordinarily  diverse.  Thus,  during  last 
summer  I  knew  him  to  be  tending  two  gardens, 
where  his  work  ranged  from  lawn-cutting  (sometimes 
with  a  scythe)  to  sowing  seeds,  taking  care  of  the 
vegetable  crops,  and  trimming  hedges.  But  this 
occupied  him  only  from  seven  in  the  morning  until 
five  in  the  afternoon.  In  the  margin  outside  these 
hours — starting  at  five  or  earlier  and  keeping  on 
until  dark — he  was  helping  the  two  small-holders, 
one  after  the  other,  to  make  their  hay  and  get  the 
ricks  built.  Then  the  ricks  required  thatching,  and 
Turner  thatched  them.  In  the  meantime  he  was 
getting  together  a  little  rick  of  his  own  for  his 
donkey's  use,  carrying  home  in  bags  the  longer  grass 
which  he  had  mowed  in  the  rough  places  of  people's 
gardens  or  had  chopped  off  in  hedgerows  near  his 
home.  A  month  later  he  was  harvesting  for  the  small- 
holders, and  again  there  was  rick-thatching  for  him 
to  do.  "  That's  seven  I've  done,"  he  remarked  to 
me,  on  the  day  when  he  finished  the  last  one.  "  But 
didn't  the  rain  stop  you  this  morning  ?"  I  asked, 
for  rain  had  begun  heavily  about  nine  o'clock.  He 
laughed.  "  No.  .  .  .  We  got'n  covered  in  somehow. 
Had  to  sramble  about,  but  he  was  thatched  afore 
the  rain  come." 

Later  still  he  was  threshing  some  of  this  corn  with 
a  flail.  I  heard  of  it  with  astonishment.  "  A 
flail  ?"  "  Yes,"  he  said  ;  "  my  old  dad  put  me  to  it 
when  I  was  seventeen,  so  I  had  to  learn."  He 
seemed  to  think  little  of  it.     But  to  me  threshing 

14 


210  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

by  hand  was  so  obsolete  and  antiquated  a  thing 
as  to  be  a  novelty ;  nor  yet  to  me  only,  for  a  friend 
to  whom  I  mentioned  the  matter  laughed,  and  asked 
if  I  had  come  across  any  knights  in  armour  lately. 

One  autumn,  when  he  was  doing  some  work  for 
myself,  he  begged  for  a  day  or  two  away  in  order 
to  take  a  job  at  turf-cutting.  When  he  returned  on 
the  third  or  fourth  day,  he  said  :  "Me  and  my 
nipper  "  (a  lad  of  about  sixteen  years  old)  "  cut 
sixteen  hundred  this  time."  Now,  lawn-turfs  are 
cut  to  a  standard  size,  three  feet  by  one,  wherefore 
I  remarked  :  "  Why,  that's  nearly  a  mile  you  have 
cut."  "  Oh,  is  it  ?"  he  said.  "  But  it  didn't  take 
long.  Ye  see,  I  had  the  nipper  to  go  along  with 
the  edgin'  tool  in  front  of  me,  and  'twan't  much 
trouble  to  get  'em  up." 

He  could  not   keep  on   for  me  regularly.     The 

thought  of  Mr.  S 's  work  waiting  to  be  done 

fidgeted  him.  "  When  I  was  up  there  last  he  was 
talkin'  about  fresh  gravellin'  all  his  paths.  I  said 
to'n,  '  If  I  was  you  I  should  wait  anyhow  till  the 
leaves  is  down — they'll  make  the  new  gravel  so 
ontidy  else.'  So  they  would,  sure.  I  keeps  puttin' 
it  off.  But  I  shall  ha'  to  go.  I  sold'n  a  little 
donkey  in  the  summer,  and  he's  hoofs'll  want  parin' 
again.     I  done 'em  not  so  long  ago,  .  .  ." 

So  his  work  varies,  week  after  week.  From  one 
job  to  another  up  and  down  the  valley  he  goes,  not 
listlessly  and  fatigued,  but  taking  a  sober  interest 
in  all  he  does.     You  can  see  in  him  very  well  how 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  211 

his  forefathers  went  about  their  affairs,  for  he  is 
plainly  a  man  after  their  pattern.  His  day's  work 
is  his  day's  pleasure.  It  is  changeful  enough,  and 
calls  for  skill  enough,  to  make  it  enjoyable  to  him. 
Furthermore,  things  on  either  side  of  it — things  he 
learnt  to  understand  long  ago — make  their  old 
appeal  to  his  senses  as  he  goes  about,  although  his 
actual  work  is  not  concerned  with  them.  In  the 
early  summer — he  had  come  to  mow  a  little  grass 
plot  for  me — I  found  him  full  of  a  boyish  delight  in 
birds  and  birds'-nests.  A  pair  of  interesting  birds 
had  arrived  ;  at  any  time  in  the  day  they  could  be 
seen  swooping  down  from  the  branch  of  a  certain 
apple-tree  and  back  again  to  their  starting-place 
without  having  touched  the  ground.  "  Fly- 
catchers !"  said  Turner  exultantly.  "  I  shall  ha'  to 
look  about.  They  got  their  nest  somewhere  near, 
you  may  be  sure  o'  that  !  A  little  wisp  o'  grass 
somewhere  in  the  clunch  (fork)  of  a  tree  ..."  (his 
glance  wandered  speculatively  round  in  search  of  a 
likely  place)  "  that's  where  they  builds.  Ah  !  look 
now  !  There  he  goes  again  !  Right  in  the  clunch 
you'll  find  their  nest,  and  as  many  as  ten  young  'uns 
in'n.  .  .  .  Yes,  I  shall  be  bound  to  find  where  he  is 
afore  I  done  with  it." 

The  next  day,  hard  by  where  he  was  at  work,  an 
exclamation  of  mine  drew  him  to  look  at  a  half- 
fledged  bird,  still  alive,  lying  at  the  foot  of  a  nut- 
tree.  "  H'm  :  so  'tis.  A  young  blackbird,"  he  said 
pitifully.     The  next  moment  he  had  the  bird  in  his 


212  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

hand.  "  Where  can  the  nest  be,  then  ?  Up  in  that 
nut  ?  Well,  to  be  sure  !  Wonders  I  hadn't  seen 
that  afore  now.  That's  it  though,  'pend  upon  it ; 
right  up  in  the  clunch  o'  that  bough."  Before  I 
could  say  a  word  he  was  half-way  up  amongst  the 
branches,  long-legged  and  struggling,  to  put  the  bird 
back  into  its  nest. 

As  he  has  always  lived  in  the  valley,  he  is  full  of 
memories  of  it,  and  especially  early  memories  ;  re- 
calling the  comparative  scantiness  of  its  population 
when  he  was  a  boy,  and  the  great  extent  of  the 
common  ;  and  the  warm  banks  where  hedgehogs 
abounded — hedgehogs  which  his  father  used  to  kill 
and  cook  ;  and  the  wells  of  good  water,  so  few  and 
precious  that  each  had  its  local  name.  For  instance, 
"  Butcher's  Well  "  (so-called  to  this  day,  he  says) 
"  was  where  Jack  Butcher  used  to  live,  what  was 
shepherd  for  Mr.  Warner  up  there  at  Manley  Bridge." 
At  eight  years  old  he  was  sent  out  on  to  the  common 
to  mind  cows  ;  at  ten  he  was  thought  big  enough  to 
be  helpful  to  his  father,  at  piece-work  in  the  hop- 
grounds  ;  and  in  due  time  he  began  to  go  "  down 
into  Sussex  "  with  his  father  and  others  for  the 
harvesting.  His  very  first  experience  there  was  of  a 
wet  August,  when  the  men  could  earn  no  money 
and  were  reduced  to  living  on  bread  and  apples  ;  but 
other  years  have  left  him  with  happier  memories 
of  that  annual  outing.  "  Old  Sussex  !"  he  laughed 
once  in  appreciative  reminiscence — "Old  Sussex! 
Them  old  hills  !     I  did  use  to  have  a  appetite  there ! 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  213 

I  could  eat  anything.  .  .  .  You  could  go  to  the  top 
of  a  hill  and  look  down  one  way  and  p'raps  not  see 
more'n  four  or  five  places  (houses  or  farmsteads), 
and  look  t'other  way  and  mebbe  not  be  able  to  see 
e'er  a  one  at  all.  Oh,  a  reg'lar  wild,  out-o'-th'-way 
place  'twas."  On  this  farm,  to  which  his  gang  went 
year  after  year,  the  farmer  "  didn't  pay  very  high — 
you  couldn't  expect'n  to.  But  he  used  to  treat  us 
very  well.  Send  out  great  puddin's  for  us  two  or 
three  times  a  week,  and  cider,  and  bread-an'- 
cheese.  .  .  .  Nine  rabbits  old  Fisher  the  roadman 
out  here  says  'twas,  but  I  dunno  'bout  that,  but  I 
knows  'twas  as  many  as  seven,  the  farmer  put  into 
one  puddin'  for  us.  There  was  a  rabbit  for  each  man, 
be  how  'twill.  In  a  great  yaller  basin.  .  .  ."  Turner 
held  out  his  arms  to  illustrate  a  large  circumference. 
In  the  time  of  his  prosperity  the  main  of  his  work 
was  with  his  own  horse  and  cart,  so  that  I  know  him 
to  have  had  considerable  experience  in  that  way  ; 
and  I  recollect,  too,  his  being  at  plough  in  one  of 
the  slanting  gardens  of  this  valley,  not  with  his 
horse — the  ground  was  too  steep  for  that — but  with 
two  donkeys  harnessed  to  a  small  plough  which  he 
kept  especially  for  such  work.  Truly  it  would  be 
hard  to  "  put  him  out,"  hard  to  find  him  at  a  loss, 
in  anything  connected  with  country  industry.  He 
spoilt  some  sea-kale  for  me  once,  admitting,  however, 
before  he  began  that  he  was  not  very  familiar  with 
its  management  ;  but  that  is  the  only  matter  of  its 
kind  in  which  I  have  proved  him  inefficient.     To  see 


214  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

him  putting  young  cabbage-plants  in  rows  is  to 
realize  what  a  fine  thing  it  is  to  know  the  best  way 
of  going  to  work,  even  at  such  a  simple-seeming 
task  as  that  ;  and  I  would  not  undertake  to  count 
in  how  many  such  things  he  is  proficient. 

One  day  he  was  telling  me  an  anecdote  of  his 
taking  honey  from  an  old-fashioned  straw  beehive ; 
another  day  the  talk  was  of  pruning  fruit-trees.  I 
had  shown  him  an  apple — the  first  one  to  be  picked 
from  a  young  tree — and  he  at  once  named  it  cor- 
rectly as  a  "  Blenheim  Orange,"  recognizing  it  by  its 
"  eye,"  whereupon  I  asked  a  question  or  two,  and, 
finally,  if  he  understood  pruning.  There  came  his 
customary  laugh,  while  his  eyes  twinkled,  as  if  the 
question  amused  him,  as  if  I  might  have  known  that 
he  understood  pruning.  "  Yes,  I've  done  it  many's 
a  time.  Grape  vines,  too."  Who  taught  him  ? 
"  Oh,  'twas  my  old  uncle  made  me  do  that.  He  was 
laid  up  one  time — 'twas  when  I  was  eighteen  year 
old — and  he  says  to  me  :  '  You'll  ha'  to  do  it.  Now's 
your  time  to  learn.  .  .  .'  Of  course  he  showed  me 
how.  So  'twas  he  as  showed  me  how  to  thatch.  .  .  . 
My  father  never  knowed  how  to  do  that  chin',  nor 
anythink  else  much.  He  was  mostly  hop-ground. 
He  done  a  little  mowin',  of  course."  Equally  of 
course,  the  father  had  reaped  and  harvested,  and 
kept  pigs  and  cows,  and  a  few  odd  things  besides ; 
nevertheless,  being  chiefly  a  wage-earner,  "  he  never 
knowed  much,"  and  it  was  to  the  uncle  that  the  lad 
owed  his  best  training. 


THE  OPPORTUNITY  215 

From  talk  of  the  uncle,  and  of  the  uncle's  cows, 
of  which  he  had  charge  for  a  time,  he  drifted  off  to 
mention  a  curious  piece  of  old  thrift  connected  with 
the  common,  and  practised  apparently  for  some 
time  after  the  enclosure.  There  was  a  man  he 
knew  in  those  now  remote  days  who  fed  his  cows 
for  a  part  of  the  year  on  furze,  or  "  fuzz,"  as  we 
call  it  here.  Two  acres  of  furze  he  had,  which  he 
cut  close  in  alternate  years,  the  second  year's 
growth  making  a  fine  juicy  fodder  when  chopped 
small  into  a  sort  of  chaff.  An  old  hand-apparatus 
for  that  purpose — a  kind  of  chaff-cutting  box — was 
described  to  me.  The  same  man  had  a  horse,  which 
also  did  well  on  furze  diet  mixed  with  a  little  malt 
from  the  man's  own  beer-brewing. 

To  the  lore  derived  from  his  uncle  and  others. 
Turner  has  added  much  by  his  own  observation — 
not,  of  course,  intentional  observation  scientifically 
verified,  but  that  shrewd  and  practical  folk-observa- 
tion, if  I  may  so  call  it,  by  which  in  the  course  of 
generations  the  rural  English  had  already  garnered 
such  a  store  of  mingled  knowledge  and  error.  So 
he  knows,  or  thinks  he  knows,  why  certain  late- 
bearing  apple-trees  have  fruit  only  every  other 
year,  and  what  effect  on  the  potato  crop  is  caused 
by  dressing  our  sandy  soil  with  chalk  or  lime ;  so  he 
watches  the  new  mole-runs,  or  puzzles  to  make  out 
what  birds  they  can  be  that  peck  the  ripening  peas 
out  of  the  pods,  or  estimates  the  yield  of  oats  to  the 
acre   by  counting  the  sheaves   that  he  stacks,  or 


2i6  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

examines  the  lawn  to  see  what  kinds  of  grass  are 
thriving.  About  all  such  matters  his  talk  is  the 
talk  of  an  experienced  man  habitually  interested 
in  his  subject,  and  yet  it  is  never  obtrusive.  The 
remarks  fall  from  him  casually  ;  you  feel,  too,  that 
while  he  is  telling  you  something  that  he  noticed 
yesterday  or  years  ago  his  eyes  are  alert  to  seize  any 
new  detail  that  may  seem  worthy  of  attention. 
Details  are  always  really  his  subject,  for  the  generali- 
zations he  sometimes  offers  are  built  on  the  flimsiest 
foundation  of  but  one  or  two  observed  facts.  But 
I  am  not  now  concerned  with  the  value  of  his  obser- 
vations for  themselves  ;  the  point  is  that  to  him 
they  are  so  interesting.  He  is  a  man  who  seems  to 
enjoy  his  life  with  an  undiminished  zest  from 
morning  to  night.  It  is  doubtful  if  the  working 
hours  afford,  to  nine  out  of  ten  modem  and  even 
"  educated  "  men,  such  a  constant  refreshment  of 
acceptable  incidents  as  Turner's  hours  bring  to 
him. 

He  is  perhaps  the  best  specimen  of  the  old  stock 
now  left  in  the  valley  ;  but  it  must  not  be  thought 
that  he  is  singular.  Others  there  are  not  very 
unlike  him  ;  and  all  that  one  hears  of  them  goes 
to  prove  that  the  old  cottage  thrift,  whatever  its 
limitations  may  have  been,  did  at  least  make  the 
day's  work  interesting  enough  to  a  man,  without  his 
needing  to  care  about  leisure  evenings.  Turner, 
for  his  part,  does  not  value  them  at  all.  In  the 
winter  he  is  often  in  bed  before  seven  o'clock. 


XVI 

THE  OBSTACLES 

Keeping  this  old-fashioned  kind  of  life  in  mind  as 
we  turn  again  to  the  modern  labourer's  existence, 
we  see  at  once  where  the  change  has  come  in,  and 
why  leisure,  from  being  of  small  account,  has  become 
of  so  great  importance.  It  is  the  amends  due  for 
a  deprivation  that  has  been  suffered.  Unlike  the 
industry  of  a  peasantry,  commercial  wage-earning 
cannot  satisfy  the  cravings  of  a  man's  soul  at  the 
same  time  that  it  occupies  his  body,  cannot  exer- 
cise many  of  his  faculties  or  appeal  to  many  of  his 
tastes  ;  and  therefore,  if  he  would  have  any  profit, 
any  enjoyment,  of  his  own  human  nature,  he  must 
contrive  to  get  it  in  his  leisure  time. 

In  illustration  of  this  position,  I  will  take  the  case 
— it  is  fairly  typical — of  the  coal-carter  mentioned 
in  the  last  chapter.  He  is  about  twenty-five  years 
old  now  ;  and  his  career  so  far,  from  the  time  when 
he  left  school,  may  be  soon  outlined.  It  is  true,  I 
cannot  say  what  his  first  employment  was ;  but  it 
can  be  guessed ;  for  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  began 
as  an  errand-boy,  and  that  presently,  growing  bigger, 
he  took  a  turn  at  driving  a  gravel-cart  to  and  fro 

217 


2i8  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

between  the  gravel-pits  and  the  railway.  Assuming 
this,  I  can  go  on  to  speak  from  my  own  knowledge. 
His  growth  and  strength  came  early  ;  I  remember 
noticing  him  first  as  a  powerful  fellow,  not  more 
than  seventeen  or  eighteen  years  old,  but  already 
doing  a  man's  work  as  a  gravel-digger.  \Vhen  that 
work  slackened  after  two  or  three  years,  he  got 
employment — not  willingly,  but  because  times  were 
bad — at  night- work  with  the  "  ballast-train  "  on 
the  railway.  Exhausting  if  not  brutalizing  labour, 
that  is.  At  ten  or  eleven  at  night  the  gangs  of  men 
start  off,  travelling  in  open  trucks  to  the  part  of 
the  line  they  are  to  repair,  and  there  they  work 
throughout  the  night,  on  wind-swept  embankment 
or  in  draughty  cutting,  taking  all  the  weather  that 
the  nights  bring  up.  This  man  endured  it  for  some 
twelve  months,  until  a  neglected  chill  turned  to 
bronchitis  and  pleurisy,  and  nearly  ended  his  life. 
After  that  he  had  a  long  spell  of  unemployment, 
and  was  on  the  point  of  going  back  to  the  ballast- 
train  as  a  last  resource  when,  by  good  fortune,  he 
got  his  present  job.  He  has  been  a  coal-carter  for 
three  or  four  years — a  fact  which  testifies  to  his 
efficiency.  By  half-past  six  o'clock  in  the  morning 
he  has  to  be  in  the  stables  ;  then  comes  the  day  on 
the  road,  during  which  he  will  lift  on  his  back,  into 
the  van  and  out  of  it,  and  perhaps  will  carry  for 
long  distances,  nine  or  ten  tons  of  coal — say,  twenty 
hundredweight  bags  every  hour  ;  by  half-past  five 
or  six  in  the  evening  he  has  put  up  his  horse  for  the 


THE  OBSTACLES  219 

night  ;  and  so  his  day's  work  is  over,  excepting  that 
he  has  about  a  mile  to  walk  home. 

Of  this  employment,  which,  if  the  man  is  lucky, 
will  continue  until  he  is  old  and  worn-out,  we  may 
admit  that  it  is  more  useful  by  far — to  the  com- 
munity— than  the  old  village  industries  were  wont 
to  be.  Concentrated  upon  one  kind  of  effort,  it 
perhaps  doubles  the  productivity  of  a  day's  work. 
But  just  because  it  is  so  concentrated  it  cannot 
yield  to  the  man  himself  any  variety  of  delights 
such  as  men  occupied  in  the  old  way  were  wont  to 
enjoy.  It  demands  from  him  but  little  skill  ;  it 
neither  requires  him  to  possess  a  great  fund  of  local 
information  and  useful  lore,  nor  yet  takes  him 
where  he  could  gather  such  a  store  for  his  own 
pleasure.  The  zest  and  fascination  of  living,  with 
the  senses  alert,  the  tastes  awake,  and  manifold 
sights  and  sounds  appealing  to  his  happy  recognition 
— all  these  have  to  be  forgotten  until  he  gets  home 
and  is  free  for  a  little  while.  Then  he  may  seek 
them  if  he  can,  using  art  or  pastimes — what  we  call 
"  civilization  " — for  that  end.  The  two  hours  or  so 
of  leisure  are  his  opportunity. 

But  after  a  day  like  the  coal-carter's,  where  is  the 
man  that  could  even  begin  to  refresh  himself  with 
the  arts,  or  even  the  games,  of  civilization  ?  For  all 
the  active  use  he  can  make  of  them  those  spare 
hours  of  his  do  not  deserve  to  be  called  leisure  ;  they 
are  the  fagged  end  of  the  da}^  Slouching  home  to 
them,  as  it  were  from  under  ten  tons  of  coal,  he  has 


220  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

no  energy  left  for  further  effort .     The  community  has 
had  all  his  energy,  all  his  power  to  enjoy  civiliza- 
tion ;  and  has  paid  him  three  shillings  and  sixpence 
for  it.     It  is  small  wonder  that  he  seems  not  to  avail 
himself  of  the  opportunity,  prize  it  though  he  may. 
Yet  there  is  still  a  possibility  to  be  considered. 
Albeit  any  active  use  of  leisure  is  out  of  the  question, 
is  he  therefore  debarred  from  a  more  tranquil  en- 
joyment ?     He  sits  gossiping  with  his  family,  but 
why  should   the  gossip  be  listless  and  yawning  ? 
\¥hy  should  not  he,  to  say  nothing  of  his  relations, 
enjoy   the   refreshment   of   talk   enlivened   by   the 
play  of  pleasant  and  varied  thoughts  ?     As  everyone 
knows,  the  actual  topic  of  conversation  is  not  what 
makes   the   charm  ;  be  what   it   may,  it   will   still 
be  agreeable,  provided  that  it  goes  to  an  accom- 
paniment of  ideas  too   plentiful   and  swift   to   be 
expressed.     Every  allusion  then  extends  the  interest 
of  it  ;  reawakened  memories  add  to  its  pleasure  ; 
if  the  minds  engaged  are  fairly  well  furnished  with 
ideas,   either  by  experience  or  by  education,   the 
intercourse   between   them   goes   on   in   a   sort   of 
luminous  medium  which  fills  the  whole  being  with 
contentment.     Supposing,  then,  that  by  education, 
or  previous  experience,  the  coal-carter's  mind  has 
been  thus  well  furnished,  his  scanty  leisure  may 
still  compensate  him  for  the  long  dull  hours  of  his 
wage-earning,  and  the  new  thrift  will  after  all  have 
made  amends  for  the  deprivation  of  the  old  peasant 
enjoyments. 


THE  OBSTACLES  221 

But  to  suppose  this  is  to  suppose  a  most  unlikely 
thing.  Previous  experience,  at  any  rate,  has  done 
little  for  the  man.  The  peasants  themselves  were 
better  off.  Compare  his  chances,  once  more,  with 
those  of  a  man  like  Turner.  From  earliest  childhood, 
Turner's  days  and  nights  have  been  bountiful  to  him 
in  many-coloured  impressions.  At  the  outset  he 
saw  and  had  part  in  those  rural  activities,  changeful, 
accomplished,  carried  on  by  many  forms  of  skill 
and  directed  by  a  vast  amount  of  traditional  wisdom, 
whereby  the  country  people  of  England  had  for  ages 
supported  themselves  in  their  quiet  valleys.  His 
brain  still  teems  with  recollections  of  all  this  in- 
dustry. And  then  to  those  recollections  must  be 
added  memories  of  the  scenes  in  which  the  industry 
went  on — the  wide  landscapes,  the  glowing  corn- 
fields, the  meadows,  woods,  heaths  ;  and  likewise 
the  details  of  barn  and  rick-yard,  and  stable  and 
cowstall,  and  numberless  other  corners  into  which 
his  work  has  taken  him.  To  anyone  who  under- 
stands them,  those  details  are  themselves  like  an 
interesting  book,  full  of  "  idea  "  legible  everywhere 
in  the  shapes  which  country  craftsmanship  gave 
to  them  ;  and  Turner  understands  them  through 
and  through.  Nor  is  this  all.  If  not  actual  adven- 
ture and  romance,  still  many  of  the  factors  of 
adventure  and  romance  have  accompanied  him 
through  his  life  ;  so  that  it  is  good  even  to  think  of 
all  that  he  has  seen.  He  has  had  experience 
(travelling  down  to  Sussex)  of  the  dead  silence  of 


222  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

country  roads  at  midnight  under  the  stars  ;  has 
known  the  August  sunrise,  and  the  afternoon  heat, 
and  the  chilly  moonlight,  high  up  on  the  South 
Downs  ;  and  the  glint  of  the  sunshine  in  apple- 
orchards  at  cider-making  time  ;  and  the  grey  coming 
of  the  rain  that  urges  a  man  to  hurry  with  his 
thatching  ;  and  the  thickening  of  the  white  winter 
fog  across  the  heaths  towards  night-fall,  when  way- 
farers might  miss  the  track  and  wander  all  night 
unless  they  knew  well  what  they  were  about.  Of 
such  stuff  as  this  for  the  brain-life  to  feed  upon 
there  has  been  great  abundance  in  Turner's  career, 
but  of  such  stuff  what  memories  can  the  coal-carter 
have  ? 

Already  in  his  earliest  childhood  the  principal 
chances  were  gone.  The  common  had  been  en- 
closed ;  no  little  boys  were  sent  out  to  mind  cows 
there  all  day,  and  incidentally  to  look  for  birds'- 
nests  and  acquaint  themselves  with  the  ways  of 
the  rabbits  and  hedgehogs  and  butterflies  and  birds 
of  the  heath.  Fenced-in  property,  guarded  by 
the  Policeman  and  the  Law,  restricted  the  boy's 
games  to  the  shabby  waste-places  of  the  valley,  and 
to  the  footpaths  and  roads,  where  there  was  not 
much  for  a  child  to  do  or  to  see.  At  home,  and  in 
the  homes  of  his  companions,  the  new  thrift  was  in 
vogue  ;  he  might  not  watch  the  homely  cottage 
doings,  and  listen  to  traditional  talk  about  them, 
and  look  up  admiringly  at  able  men  and  women 
•engaged  upon  them,  for  the  very  good  reason  that 


THE  OBSTACLES  223 

no  such  things  went  on.  Men  slaving  at  their 
gardens  he  might  see,  and  women  weary  at  their 
washing  and  mending,  amid  scenes  of  little  dignity 
and  much  poverty  and  makeshift  untidiness  ;  but 
that  was  all.  The  coherent  and  self-explanatory 
village  life  had  given  place  to  a  half  blind  struggle 
of  individuals  against  circumstances  and  economic 
processes  which  no  child  could  possibly  understand  ; 
and  it  was  with  the  pitiful  stock  of  ideas  to  be 
derived  from  these  conditions  that  the  coal-carter 
passed  out  of  childhood,  to  enter  upon  the  wage- 
earning  career  which  I  have  already  outlined. 

I  need  not  spend  much  time  in  discussing  that 
career  as  a  source  of  ideas.  From  first  to  last,  and 
with  the  coal-carting  period  thrown  in,  monotony 
rather  than  variety  has  been  the  characteristic  of  it. 
I  do  not  say  that  it  has  been  quite  fruitless.  There 
are  impressions  to  be  derived,  and  intense  ones 
probably,  from  working  all  day  against  the  "  face  " 
of  a  gravel-pit,  with  the  broken  edge  of  the  field 
up  above  one's  head  for  horizon ;  and  from  the  skilled 
use  of  pick  and  shovel ;  and  from  the  weight  of  the 
wheelbarrow  full  of  gravel  as  one  wheels  it  along 
a  sagging  plank.  That  is  something  to  have  ex- 
perienced ;  as  it  is  to  have  sweated  at  night  in  a 
railway-cutting  along  with  other  men  under  the 
eye  of  a  ganger,  and  to  have  known  starlight,  or 
rain,  or  frost,  or  fog,  or  tempest  meanwhile.  It  is 
something,  even,  to  see  the  life  of  the  roads  year  after 
year  from  the  footboard  of  a  coal-van,  and  to  be 


224  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

in  charge  of  a  horse  hour  after  hour  ;  but  I  am 
talking  now  of  ideas  which  might  give  buoyancy  and 
zest  to  the  gossip  beside  a  man's  fireside  in  the 
evening  when  he  is  tired  ;  and  I  think  it  unnecessary 
to  argue  that,  in  regard  to  providing  this  kind  of 
mental  furniture,  the  coal-carter's  experience  of 
life  cannot  have  done  great  things  for  him.  It  has 
been  poverty-stricken  just  where  the  peasant  life 
was  so  rich  ;  it  has  left  a  great  deficiency,  which  could 
only  have  been  made  good  by  an  education  inten- 
tionally given  for  that  end. 

But  it  goes  almost  without  saying  that  the  man's 
"  education  "  did  very  little  to  enrich  his  mind. 
The  ideas  and  accomplishments  he  picked  up  at  the 
elementary  school  between  his  fourth  and  fourteenth 
years  were  of  course  in  themselves  insufficient  for 
the  needs  of  a  grown  man,  and  it  would  be  unfair  to 
criticize  his  schooling  from  that  standpoint.  Its 
defect  was  that  it  failed  to  initiate  him  into  the 
inner  significance  of  information  in  general,  and 
failed  wholly  to  start  him  on  the  path  of  learning. 
It  was  sterile  of  results.  It  opened  to  him  no  view, 
no  vista  ;  set  up  in  his  brain  no  stir  of  activity  such 
as  could  continue  after  he  had  left  school  ;  and  this 
for  the  reason  that  those  simple  items  of  knowledge 
which  it  conveyed  to  him  were  too  scrappy  and  too 
few  to  begin  running  together  into  any  understand- 
ing of  the  larger  aspects  of  life.  A  few  rules  of 
arithmetic,  a  little  of  the  geography  of  the  British 
Islands,  a  selection  of  anecdotes  from  the  annals 


THE  OBSTACLES  225 

of  the  ancient  Jews  ;  no  English  history,  no  fairy- 
tales or  romance,  no  inkling  of  the  infinities  of  time 
and  space,  or  of  the  riches  of  human  thought  ;  but 
merely  a  few  "  pieces  "  of  poetry,  and  a  few  hap- 
hazard and  detached  observations  (called  "  Nature 
Study "  nowadays)  about  familiar  things — "  the 
cat,"  "  the  cow,"  "  the  parsnip,"  "  the  rainbow," 
and  so  forth — this  was  the  jumble  of  stuff  offered 
to  the  child's  mind — a  jumble  to  which  it  would 
puzzle  a  philosopher  to  give  coherence.  And  what 
could  a  child  get  from  it  to  kindle  his  enthusiasm 
for  that  civilized  learning  in  which,  none  the  less, 
it  all  may  have  its  place  ?  When  the  boy  left  school 
his  "  education  "  had  but  barely  begun. 

And  hardly  anything  has  happened  since  then 
to  carry  it  farther,  although  once  there  seemed  just 
a  chance  of  something  better.  During  two  succes- 
sive winters  the  lad,  being  then  from  sixteen  to 
seventeen  years  old,  went  to  a  night-school,  which 
was  opened  for  twenty-six  weeks  in  each  "  session," 
and  for  four  hours  in  each  week.  But  the  hope 
proved  fallacious.  In  those  hundred  and  four 
hours  a  year — hours  which  came  after  a  tiring  day's 
work — his  brain  was  fed  upon  "  mensuration  "  and 
"  the  science  of  horticulture,"  the  former  on  the 
chance  that  some  day  he  might  want  to  measure  a 
wall  for  paper-hanging  or  do  some  other  job  of  the 
sort,  and  the  latter  in  case  fate  should  have  marked 
him  out  for  a  nursery-gardener,  when  it  would  be 
handy  to  know  that  germinating  seeds  begin  by 

15 


226  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

pushing  down  a  root  and  pushing  up  a  leaf  or  two. 
This  gives  a  notion  of  the  sort  of  idea  the  luckless 
fellow  derived  from  the  night-school.  I  do  not  think 
that  the  joinery-classes  at  present  being  held  in  the 
night-school  had  begun  in  his  time  ;  but  supposing 
that  he  also  learnt  joinery,  he  might,  now  that 
he  is  a  man,  add  thoughts  of  mortices  and  tenons 
and  mitre-joints  to  his  other  thoughts  about  wall 
areas  and  germinating  seeds.  Of  course,  all  these 
things — like  Jewish  history  or  English  geography — 
are  worth  knowing  ;  but  again  it  is  true,  of  these 
things  no  less  than  of  the  childish  learning  acquired 
at  the  day-school,  that  whatever  their  worth  may  be 
to  the  people  concerned  to  know  them,  they  were 
very  unlikely  to  set  up  in  this  young  man's  brain 
any  constructive  idea-activity,  any  refreshing  form 
of  thought  that  would  enrich  his  leisure  now,  or  give 
zest  to  his  conversation.  They  were  odds  and  ends 
of  knowledge  ;  more  comparable  to  the  numberless 
odds  and  ends  in  which  peasants  were  so  rich  than 
to  the  flowing  and  luminous  idea-life  of  modern 
civilization. 

Adequate  help  having  thus  failed  to  reach  the  man 
from  any  source  at  any  time  of  his  life,  it  cannot  be 
surprising  if  now  the  evening's  opportunity  finds 
him  unprepared.  He  is  between  two  civilizations, 
one  of  which  has  lapsed,  while  the  other  has  not  yet 
come  his  way.  And  what  is  true  of  him  is  true  of 
the  younger  labouring  men  in  general.  In  bread- 
and-cheese  matters  they  are  perhaps  as  well  off  as 


THE  OBSTACLES  227 

their  forefathers  in  the  village,  but  they  are  at  a 
disadvantage  in  the  matter  of  varied  and  successful 
vitality.  The  wage-earning  thrift  which  has  in- 
creased their  usefulness  as  drudges  has  diminished 
their  effectiveness  as  human  beings  ;  for  it  has  failed 
to  introduce  into  their  homes  those  enlivening,  those 
spirit-stirring  influences  which  it  denies  to  them 
when  they  are  away  from  home  doing  their  work. 
Hence  a  strange  thing.  The  unemployed  hours  of 
the  evening,  which  should  be  such  a  boon,  are  a 
time  of  blank  and  disconsolate  tediousness,  and 
when  the  longer  days  of  the  year  come  round  many 
a  man  in  the  valley  who  ought  to  be  glad  of  his 
spare  time  dodges  the  wearisome  problem  of  what 
to  do  with  it  by  putting  himself  to  further  work, 
until  he  can  go  to  bed  without  feeling  that  he  has 
been  wasting  his  life.  Yet  that  is  really  no  solution 
of  the  problem.  It  means  that  the  men  are  trying 
to  be  peasants  again,  because  they  can  discover  no 
art  of  living,  no  civilization,  compatible  with  the  new 
thrift. 

Of  course  it  is  true  that  they  are  handicapped  by 
the  lowness  of  the  wages  they  receive.  However 
much  time  one  may  have,  it  would  be  all  but  im- 
possible to  follow  up  modern  civilization  without 
any  of  its  apparatus,  in  the  shape  of  books  and 
musical  instruments,  and  the  comfort  of  seclusion 
in  a  spare  room  ;  and  none  of  these  advantages  can 
be  bought  out  of  an  income  of  eighteen  shillings 
a  week.     That  is  plainly  the  central  difficulty — a 


228  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

difficulty  which,  unless  it  can  be  put  right,  condemns 
our  commercial  economy  as  wholly  inadequate  to 
the  needs  of  labouring  people.  Supposing,  how- 
ever, that  this  defect  could  be  suddenly  remedied  ; 
supposing,  that  is,  that  by  some  miracle  wages 
could  be  so  adjusted  as  to  put  the  labourer  in 
command  of  the  apparatus  of  civilization  ;  still,  he 
could  not  use  the  apparatus  without  a  personal 
adjustment.  He  is  impoverished,  not  in  money 
only,  but  also  in  development  of  his  natural  facul- 
ties, since  the  old  village  civilization  has  ceased  to 
help  him. 


XVII 

THE  WOMEN'S  NEED 

If,  while  the  common  was  still  open,  very  few  even 
of  the  men  of  the  village  troubled  about  regular 
emplo3mient,  we  may  well  believe  that  there  were 
still  fewer  regular  wage-earners  amongst  the  women. 
I  do  not  mean  that  wage-earning  was  a  thing  they 
never  did.  There  was  not  a  woman  in  the  valley, 
perhaps,  but  had  experience  of  it  at  hay-making 
and  harvesting,  while  all  would  have  been  dis- 
appointed to  miss  the  hop-picking.  But  these 
occasional  employments  had  more  resemblance  to 
holidays  and  outings  than  they  had  to  constant 
work  for  a  living. 

As  the  new  thrift  gradually  established  itself,  the 
younger  women  at  least  had  to  alter  their  ways. 
For  observe  what  had  happened.  A  number  of  men, 
once  half-independent,  but  now  wanting  work  con- 
stantly, had  been  forced  into  a  market  where  extra 
labour  was  hardly  required  ;  and  it  needs  no 
argument  to  prove  that,  under  such  conditions, 
they  were  not  only  unable  to  command  high  wages, 
but  were  often  unemployed.  Of  necessity,  there- 
fore, the  women  were  obliged  to  make  up  the  week's 

229 


230  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

income  by  their  own  earnings.  The  situation,  in 
fact,  was  similar  to  that  which  had  been  produced 
in  earlier  times  and  in  other  parishes  by  the  old  Poor 
Law,  when  parish  pay  enabled  men  to  work  for  less 
than  a  living  wage  ;  only  now  the  deficiency  was 
made  up,  not  at  the  expense  of  employers  and 
ratepayers,  but  at  the  expense  of  women  and 
girls. 

But,  though  becoming  wage-earners,  the  women 
missed  the  first  advantage  that  wage-earners  should 
enjoy — nam.ely,  leisure  time.  After  all,  the  new 
thrift  had  but  partially  freed  them  from  their  old 
occupations.  They  might  buy  at  a  shop  many 
things  which  their  mothers  had  had  to  make  ;  but 
there  was  no  going  to  a  shop  to  get  the  washing  and 
scrubbing  done,  the  beds  made,  the  food  cooked, 
the  clothes  mended.  All  this  remained  to  the 
women  as  before.  When  they  came  home  from  the 
fields — at  first  it  was  principally  by  field-work  that 
they  earned  wages — it  was  not  to  be  at  leisure,  but 
to  fall-to  again  on  these  domestic  doings,  just  as  if 
there  had  been  no  change,  just  as  if  they  were 
peasant  women  still. 

And  yet,  though  this  work  had  not  changed, 
there  was  henceforth  a  vast  difference  in  its  mean- 
ing to  the  women.  To  approach  it  in  the  true 
peasant  or  cottage  woman's  temper  was  impossible  ; 
nor  in  doing  it  might  the  labourer's  wife  enjoy  half 
the  satisfaction  that  had  rewarded  the  fatigue  of 
her  mother  and  grandmother.     Something  dropped 


THE  WOMEN'S  NEED  231 

away  from  it  that  could  not  be  replaced  when  the 
old  conditions  died  out. 

To  discover  what  the  "  something  "  was,  one  need 
not  idealize  those  old  conditions.  It  would  be  a 
mistake  to  suppose  that  the  peasant  economy,  as 
practised  in  this  valley,  was  nearly  so  good  a  thing 
for  women  as  it  was  for  the  other  sex  ;  a  mistake  to 
think  that  their  life  was  all  honey,  all  simple  sweet- 
ness and  light,  all  an  idyll  of  samplers  and  geraniums 
in  cottage  windows.  On  the  contrary,  I  believe 
that  very  often  it  grew  intensely  ugly,  and  was  as 
narrowing  as  it  was  ugly.  The  women  saw  nothing, 
and  learnt  nothing,  of  the  outer  world  ;  and,  in  their 
own  world,  they  saw  and  learnt  much  that  was  ill. 
All  the  brutalities  connected  with  getting  a  living 
on  peasant  terms  tended  to  coarsen  them — the 
cruelties  of  men  to  one  another,  the  horrors  that 
had  to  be  inflicted  on  animals,  the  miseries  of 
disease  suffered  by  ignorant  human  beings.  Their 
perpetual  attention  to  material  cares  tended  to 
make  them  materialized  and  sordid  ;  they  grew 
callous  ;  there  was  no  room  to  cultivate  delicacy  of 
imagination.  All  this  you  must  admit  into  the 
picture  of  the  peasant  woman's  life,  if  you  would 
try  to  see  it  fairly  on  the  bad  side  as  well  as  on  the 
good  side.  Still,  a  good  side  there  was,  and  that 
it  was  far  oftener  in  evidence  than  the  other  I  am 
well  persuaded,  when  I  remember  the  older  village 
women  who  are  dead  now.  They,  so  masculine  in 
their  outlook,  yet  so  true-hearted  and,  now  and  then, 


232  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

so  full  of  womanly  tenderness  and  high  feeling, 
could  not  have  been  the  product  of  conditions  that 
were  often  evil.  And  one  merit  in  particular  must 
be  conceded  to  the  old  style  of  life.  Say  that  the 
women's  work  was  too  incessant,  and  that  some  of 
it  was  distinctly  ill  to  do  ;  yet,  taken  as  a  whole, 
it  was  not  uninteresting,  and  it  was  just  that  whole- 
ness of  it  that  made  all  the  difference.  The  most 
tiresome  duties — those  domestic  cares  which  were 
destined  to  become  so  irksome  to  women  of  a 
later  day  —  were  less  tiresome  because  they  were 
parts  of  a  whole.  Through  them  all  shone  the 
promise  of  happier  hours  to  be  won  by  their  per- 
formance. 

For  although  in  this  rough  valley  women  might 
not  achieve  the  finer  successes  of  cottage  folk-life, 
where  it  led  up  into  gracefulness  and  serenity,  in  a 
coarser  fashion  the  essential  spirit  of  pride  in 
capable  doing  was  certainly  theirs.  They  could, 
and  did,  enjoy  the  satisfaction  of  proficiency,  and 
win  respect  for  it  from  their  neighbours.  If  they 
were  not  neat,  they  were  very  handy  ;  if  there  was 
no  superlative  finish  about  their  work,  there  was 
soundness  of  quality,  which  they  knew  would  be 
recognized  as  so  much  to  their  credit.  Old  gossip 
bears  me  out.  Conceive  the  nimble  and  self- 
confident  temper  of  those  two  cottage  women — 
not  in  this  village,  I  admit,  but  in  the  next  one  to 
it,  and  the  thing  was  quite  possible  here — who 
always  planned  to  do  their  washing  on  the  same 


THE  WOMEN'S  NEED  233 

day,  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  who  had  the  most 
"  pieces,"  and  the  best,  to  hang  out  on  the  clothes- 
lines. The  story  must  be  seventy  years  old,  and 
I  don't  know  who  told  it  me  ;  but  it  has  always 
seemed  to  me  very  characteristic  of  the  good  side 
of  cottage  life,  whether  one  thinks  of  the  eager 
rivalry  itself  in  the  gardens,  where  the  white  clothes 
flapped,  or  of  the  long  record  implied  in  it  of  careful 
housewifery  and  quiet  needlework.  This  spirit  of 
joy  in  proficiency  must  have  sweetened  many  of  the 
cottage  duties,  and  may  well  have  run  through 
them  all.  When  a  woman  treated  her  friends  to 
home-made  wine  at  Christmas,  she  was  exhibiting 
to  them  her  own  skill  ;  when  she  cut  up  the  loaf 
she  had  baked,  or  fried  the  bacon  she  had  helped 
to  cure,  the  good  result  was  personal  to  herself  ; 
the  very  turf  she  piled  on  the  fire  had  a  homely 
satisfaction  for  her,  because,  cut  as  it  was  by  her 
husband's  own  tools,  and  smelling  of  the  neighbour- 
ing heath  as  it  burnt,  it  was  suggestive  of  the 
time-honoured  economies  of  all  the  valley.  In  this 
way  another  comfort  was  added  to  that  of  her  own 
more  personal  pleasure.  For  there  was  hardly  a 
duty  that  the  old-time  village  woman  did,  but  was 
related  closely  to  what  the  men  were  doing  out  of 
doors,  and  harmonized  with  the  general  industry 
of  her  people.  She  may  be  figured,  almost,  as  the 
member  of  a  tribe  whose  doings  explained  all  her 
own  doings,  and  to  whose  immemorial  customs  her 
scrubbing  and  washing  belonged,  not  unworthily. 


234  CHANGE  IN  THE  VDXAGE 

Her  conscience  was  in  the  work.  From  one  thing 
to  another  she  went,  now  busily  at  a  pleasant  task, 
now  doggedly  at  a  wearisome  one,  and  she  knew 
no  leisure ;  but  at  every  point  she  was  supported  by 
what  we  may  call  the  traditional  feeling  of  the  valley 
— nay,  of  the  whole  countryside — commending  her 
perhaps ;  at  any  rate,  fully  understanding  her 
position.  To  be  like  her  mother  and  her  grand- 
mother ;  to  practise  the  time-honoured  habits,  and 
to  practise  them  efficiently,  was  a  sort  of  religious 
cult  with  her,  in  the  same  way  as  it  is  nowadays 
with  women  of  a  certain  position  not  to  be  dowdy. 
The  peasant-cottager's  wife  could  never  think  of 
herself  as  a  mere  charwoman  or  washerwoman  ; 
she  had  no  such  ignoble  career.  She  was  Mrs. 
This,  or  Dame  That,  with  a  recognized  place  in  the 
village ;  and  all  the  village  traditions  were  her 
possession.  The  arts  of  her  people — the  flower- 
gardening,  the  songs  and  old  sayings  and  super- 
stitions, the  customs  of  Harvest-time  and  Christmas 
— were  hers  as  much  as  anybody's  ;  if  the  stress  of 
work  kept  her  from  partaking  in  them,  still  she  was 
not  shut  out  from  them  by  reason  of  any  social 
inferiority.  And  so  we  come  back  to  the  point  at 
issue.  House  -  drudgery  might  fill  the  peasant 
woman's  days  and  years,  and  yet  there  was  more 
belonging  to  it.  It  was  the  core  of  a  fruit  :  the 
skeleton  of  something  that  was  full  of  warm  life. 
A  larger  existence  wrapped  it  in,  and  on  the  whole 
a  kindlier  one. 


THE  WOMEN'S  NEED  235 

In  view  of  all  this  it  is  easy  to  see  why  the  house- 
duties  can  no  longer  be  approached  in  the  old 
temper,  or  yield  their  former  satisfaction  while  they 
are  being  done.  The  larger  existence  has  been 
stripped  away  from  them.  They  do  not  lead  up 
to  happier,  more  interesting,  duties  ;  they  are  not 
preparatory  to  pleasantness.  The  washing  and 
scrubbing,  the  very  cooking  and  needlework,  are 
but  so  much  trouble  awaiting  a  woman  when  she  gets 
up  in  the  morning  and  when  she  comes  home  tired 
at  night  ;  they  spoil  the  leisure  that  wage-earning 
should  win,  and  they  are  undertaken,  not  with  the 
idea  of  getting  on  to  something  productive,  some- 
thing that  would  make  the  cottage  a  m.ore  pros- 
perous home,  but  solely  to  keep  it  from  degenerat- 
ing into  an  entirely  offensive  one.  There  is  no  hope 
surrounding  these  doings. 

Nor  do  they  fail  only  because  they  have  become 
dissociated  from  pleasanter  work.  Even  the  best 
of  them  are  actually  less  interesting  in  themselves. 
Look,  for  instance,  at  cooking.  That  cheap  and 
coarse  food  which  women  now  buy  because  its 
coarseness  makes  it  cheap  is  of  a  quality  to  dis- 
courage any  cook  ;  it  is  common  to  the  village — 
the  rough  rations  of  the  poor  ;  and  the  trumpery 
crocks  and  tins,  the  bad  coal,  and  worse  fireplaces, 
do  nothing  to  make  the  preparation  of  it  more 
agreeable.  With  needlework  it  is  the  same  story  : 
commercial  thrift  has  degraded  that  craft.  She 
must  be  an  enthusiast    indeed  who  would  expend 


236  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

any  art  of  the  needle  upon  the  shabby  second-hand 
gannents,  or  the  shoddy  new  ones,  which  have  to 
content  the  labourer's  wife.  And  if  the  family 
clothes  are  not  good  to  make  or  to  mend,  neither 
are  they  good  to  wash,  or  worth  displaying  on  the 
clothes-lines  in  the  hope  of  exciting  envy  in  neigh- 
bours. 

Not  at  first,  but  in  due  time,  inefficiency  was 
added  to  the  other  causes  which  tended  to  make 
housework  unpalatable  to  the  women,  and  of   no 
use  to  them  as  an  uplifting  experience.     The  in- 
efficiency could  hardly  be  avoided.     The  mothers, 
employed  in  the   fields,  had   but   little  chance  of 
teaching    their    daughters  ;    and   these   daughters, 
growing   up,    to   marry   and   to    follow   field-work 
themselves,  kept  their  cottages  as  best  they  could, 
by  the  light  of  nature.     In  not  a  few  cases  all  sense 
of  an  art  of  well-doing  in  such  matters  was  lost, 
and  the  home  became  a  place  to  sleep  in,  to  feed 
in  ;  not  a  place  in  which  to  try  to  live  well.   Perhaps 
the  lowest  ebb  was  reached  some  fifteen  or  twenty 
years  ago.     By  then  that  feeling  of  belonging  inti- 
mately to  the  countryside  and  sharing  its  traditions 
had  died  out,  and  nothing  had  come  to  replace  it. 
For  all  practical  purposes  there  were  no  traditions, 
nor    were    there    any    true    country-folk    living    a 
peculiar    and    satisfying    life    of    their    own.     The 
women  had  become  merely  the  "  hands  "  or  em- 
ployees of  farmers,  struggling  to  make  up  money 


THE  WOMEN'S  NEED  237 

enough  every  week  for  a  wretched  shopping.  With 
health,  a  joking  humour,  and  the  inevitable  habit 
of  self-reliance,  they  preserved  a  careless  good- 
temper,  and  they  had  not  much  time  to  realize  their 
own  plight  ;  but  it  was,  for  all  that,  a  squalid  life 
that  many  of  them  led,  a  neglected  life.  Only  in 
a  very  few  cottages  did  there  linger  any  serviceable 
memory  of  better  things. 

Of  late  years  some  recovery  is  discernible.  Field- 
work,  which  fostered  a  blowsy  carelessness,  has 
declined,  and  at  the  same  time  the  arrival  of  "  resi- 
dents "  has  greatly  increased  the  demand  for  char- 
women and  washerwomen.  The  women,  therefore, 
find  it  worth  while  to  cultivate  a  certain  tidiness 
in  their  persons,  which  extends  to  their  homes.  It 
is  true  I  am  told  that  their  ideas  of  good  house- 
work are  often  rudimentary  in  the  extreme  ;  that 
the  charwoman  does  not  know  when  to  change  her 
scrubbing  water  ;  that  the  washerwoman  is  easily 
satisfied  with  quite  dubious  results  ;  and  I  can  well 
believe  it.  The  state  of  the  cottages  is  betrayed 
naively  by  the  young  girls  who  go  from  them  into 
domestic  service.  "  You  don't  seem  to  like  things 
sticky,"  one  of  these  girls  observed  to  a  mistress 
distressed  by  sticky  door-handles  one  day  and 
sticky  table-knives  the  next  day.  That  remark 
which  Richard  Jefferies  heard  a  mother  address  to 
her  daughter,  "  Gawd  help  the  poor  missus  as  gets 
hold  o'  you!"  might  very  well  be  applied  to  many 


238  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

and  many  a  child  of  fourteen  in  this  valley,  going 
out,  all  untrained,  to  her  first  "  place  ";  but  these 
things,  indicating  what  has  been  and  is,  do  not 
affect  the  truth  that  a  slight  recovery  has  occurred. 
It  is  an  open  question  how  much  of  the  recovery  is 
a  revival  of  old  ideas,  called  into  play  again  by  new 
forms  of  employment.  Perhaps  m.ore  of  it  is  due 
to  experience  which  the  younger  women  now  bring 
into  the  valley  when  they  marry,  after  being  in 
comfortable  domestic  service  outside  the  valley.  In 
other  words,  perhaps  middle-class  ideas  of  decent 
house-work  are  at  last  coming  in,  to  fill  the  place 
left  empty  by  the  obsolete  peasant  ideas. 

May  we,  then,  conclude  that  the  women  are  now 
in  a  fair  way  to  do  well ;  that  nothing  has  been  lost 
which  those  middle-class  ideas  cannot  make  good  ? 
In  my  view  the  circumstances  warrant  no  such  con- 
clusion. Consider  what  it  is  that  has  to  be  made 
good.  It  is  something  in  the  nature  of  a  civiliza- 
tion. It  is  the  larger  existence  which  enwrapped 
the  peasant  woman's  house-drudgery  and  made  it 
worth  while.  A  good  domestic  method  is  all  very 
well,  and  the  middle-class  method  is  probably 
better  than  the  old  method  ;  but  alike  in  the  peasant 
cottages,  and  now  in  middle-class  homes,  we  may 
see  in  domestic  work  a  nucleus  only — the  core  of  a 
fruit,  the  necessary  framework  of  a  more  acceptable 
life.  With  the  cottage  women  in  the  old  days  that 
work  favoured  such  developments  of  ability  and 
of  character  as  permitted  the  women  to  look  with 


THE  WOMEN'S  NEED  239 

complacency  upon  women  bred  in  other  ways. 
They  experienced  no  humiHating  contrasts.  Their 
household  drudgery  put  within  their  reach  the  full 
civilization  of  which  it  was  an  organic  part.  But 
who  can  affirm  as  much  of  their  household  drudgery 
to-day  ?  Who  can  pretend  that  the  best  accomplish- 
ment of  it  on  middle-class  lines  admits  the  cottage 
woman  into  the  full  advantages  of  middle-class 
civilization,  and  enables  her  to  look  without  humilia- 
tion upon  the  accomplishments  of  well  -  to  -  do 
women  ?  I  know  that  villa  ladies  and  district 
visitors  cling  to  some  such  belief,  but  the  notion 
is  false,  and  may  be  dismissed  without  argument, 
until  the  ladies  can  show  that  they  owe  all  their 
own  refinement  to  the  inspiring  influences  of  the 
washing-tub,  and  the  scrubbing-pail,  and  the 
kitchen-range.  The  truth  is  that  middle-class 
domesticity,  instead  of  setting  cottage  women  on 
the  road  to  middle-class  culture  of  mind  and  body, 
has  side-tracked  them — has  made  of  them  char- 
women and  laundresses,  so  that  other  women  may 
shirk  these  duties  and  be  "  cultured." 

Of  course,  their  wage-earning  and  their  home-work 
are  not  the  only  sources  from  which  ideas  that  would 
explain  and  beautify  life  might  be  obtained  by 
them.  The  other  sources,  however,  are  of  no 
great  value.  At  school,  where  (as  we  have  seen) 
the  boys  get  little  enough  general  information,  the 
girls  have  hitherto  got  less,  instruction  in  needle- 
work and  cookery  being  given  to  them  in  preference 


240  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

to  certain  more  bookish  lessons  that  the  boys  get. 
They  leave  school,  therefore,  intellectually  most 
ignorant.  Then,  in  domestic  service,  again  it  is 
in  cookery  and  that  sort  of  thing  that  they  are 
practised  ;  there  may  be  culture  of  thought  and 
taste  going  on  elsewhere  in  the  house,  but  they  are 
not  admitted  to  it.  Afterwards,  marrying,  and 
confronted  with  the  problem  of  making  both  ends 
meet  on  eighteen  shillings  a  week,  they  get  experi- 
ence indeed  of  many  things,  and,  becoming  mothers, 
they  learn  invaluable  lessons ;  yet  still  the  savoir 
vivre  that  should  make  up  for  the  old  peasant  cult, 
the  happy  outlook,  the  inspiring  point  of  view,  is 
not  attained.  Their  best  chance  is  in  the  ideas  and 
knowledge  they  may  pick  up  from  their  husbands, 
and  if  from  them  they  do  not  learn  anything  of  the 
best  that  has  been  thought  and  said  in  the  world, 
they  do  not  learn  it.  Of  their  husbands,  in  this 
connection,  there  will  be  something  further  to  be 
said  presently  ;  in  the  meantime  I  may  leave  it  to 
the  reader  to  judge  whether  the  cottage  woman's 
needs,  since  the  peasant  system  broke  down,  are 
being  well  met. 

But  I  must  not  leave  it  to  be  inferred  that  the 
women,  thus  stranded  between  two  civilizations, 
are  therefore  degraded  or  brutalized.  From  re- 
peated experience  one  knows  that  their  sense  of 
courtesy — of  good  manners  as  distinct  from  merely 
fashionable  or  cultured  manners — is  very  keen  :  in 
kindness  and  good-will  they  have  nothing  to  learn 


THE  WOMEN'S  NEED  241 

from  anybody,  and  most  of  their  "  superiors  "  and 
would-be  teachers  might  learn  from  them.  Nor 
would  I  disparage  their  improved  housekeeping,  as 
though  it  had  no  significance.  It  may  open  no 
doorway  for  them  into  middle-class  civilization,  but 
I  think  it  puts  their  spirits,  as  it  were,  on  the  watch 
for  opportunities  of  personal  development.  I  judge 
by  their  looks.  An  expression,  not  too  often  seen 
elsewhere,  rests  in  the  eyes  of  most  of  the  cottage 
v^omen — an  expression  neither  self-complacent  nor 
depressed,  nor  yet  exactly  docile,  though  it  is  near 
to  that.  The  interpretation  one  would  put  upon 
it  depends  on  the  phrases  one  is  wont  to  use.  Thus 
some  would  say  that  the  women  appear  to  be 
reaching  out  towards  "respectability"  instead  of 
the  blowsy  good-temper  bred  of  field-work  ;  others, 
more  simply,  but  perhaps  more  truly,  that  they 
are  desirous  of  being  "  good."  But  whatever  epithet 
one  gives  it,  there  is  the  fine  look  :  a  look  hardly  of 
expectancy — it  is  not  alert  enough  for  that — but 
rather  of  patient  quietness  and  self-possession,  the 
innermost  spirit  being  held  instinctively  unsullied, 
in  that  receptive  state  in  which  a  religion,  a  brave 
ethic,  would  flourish  if  the  seeds  of  such  a  thing 
could  be  sown  there.  A  hopeful,  a  generous  and 
stimulating  outlook — that  is  what  must  be  regained 
before  the  loss  of  the  peasant  outlook  can  be  made 
good  to  them.  They  are  in  want  of  a  view  of  life 
that  would  reinstate  them  in  their  own — yes,  and  in 
other  people's — estimation  ;  a  view  of  social  well- 

16 


242  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

being,  not  of  the  village  only,  but  of  all  England 
now,  in  which  they  can  hold  the  position  proper  to 
women  who  are  wives  and  mothers. 

And  this,  vague  though  it  is,  shows  up  some  of 
the  more  pressing  needs  of  the  moment.  Above 
all  things  the  economic  state  of  the  cottage-women 
requires  improvement.  There  must  be  some  definite 
leisure  for  them,  and  they  must  be  freed  from  the 
miserable  struggle  with  imminent  destitution,  if 
they  are  to  find  the  time  and  the  mental  tran- 
quillity for  viewing  life  largely.  But  leisure  is  not 
all.  They  need,  further,  an  education  to  enable 
them  to  form  an  outlook  fit  for  themselves  ;  for 
nobody  else  can  provide  them  with  such  an  outlook. 
The  middle-classes  certainly  are  not  qualified  to  be 
their  teachers.  It  may  be  said  at  once  that  the 
attempts  of  working-women  here  and  there  to 
emulate  women  of  the  idle  classes  are  of  no  use  to 
themselves  and  reflect  small  credit  on  those  they 
imitate.  In  this  connection  some  very  curious 
things — the  product  of  leisure  and  no  outlook — are 
to  be  seen  in  the  village.  That  objectionable  yet 
funny  cult  of  "superiority,"  upon  which  the  "resi- 
dent "  ladies  of  the  valley  spend  so  much  emotion, 
if  not  much  thought,  has  its  disciples  in  the  cottages  ; 
and  now  and  then  the  prosperous  wife  or  daughter 
of  some  artisan  or  other  gives  herself  airs,  and  does 
not  "  know,"  or  wiU  not  "  mix  with,"  the  wives 
and  daughters  of  mere  labourers  in  the  neighbouring 
cottages.     Whether   women   of   this   aspiring   type 


THE  WOMEN'S  NEED  243 

find  their  reward,  or  mere  bitterness,  in  the  patron- 
age of  still  higher  women  who  are  intimate  with  the 
clergy  is  more  than  I  can  say.  The  aspiration  has 
nothing  to  do  with  that  "religion,"  that  new  ethic, 
which  I  have  just  claimed  to  be  the  thing  ultimately 
needed,  before  the  loss  of  the  peasant  system  can  be 
made  up  to  the  women. 


XVIII 

THE  WANT  OF  BOOK-LEARNING 

Some  light  was  thrown  on  the  more  specific  needs 
of  the  village  by  an  experiment  in  which  I  had  a 
share  from  ten  to  thirteen  years  ago.  The  absence 
of  any  reasonable  pastime  for  the  younger  people 
suggested  it.  At  night  one  saw  boys  and  young 
men  loafing  and  shivering  under  the  lamp  outside 
the  public-house  doors,  or  in  the  glimmer  that  shone 
across  the  road  from  the  windows  of  the  one  or  two 
village  shops.  They  had  nothing  to  do  there  but 
to  stand  where  they  could  just  see  one  another  and 
try  to  be  witty  at  one  another's  expense,  or  at  the 
expense  of  any  passers-by — especially  of  women — 
who  might  be  considered  safe  game  :  that  was  their 
only  way  of  spending  the  evenings  and  at  the  same 
time  enjoying  a  little  human  companionship.  True, 
the  County  Council  had  lately  instituted  evening 
classes  for  "  technical  education  "  in  the  elementary 
schools  ;  but  these  classes  were  of  no  very  attractive 
nature,  and  at  best  they  occupied  only  two  evenings 
a  week.  As  many  as  twenty  or  five-and-twenty 
youths,  however,  attended  them,  glad  of  the  warmth 
and  light,  though  bored  by  the  instruction.      They 

244 


THE  WANT  OF  BOOK-LEARNING     245 

were  mischievous  and  inattentive  ;  they  kept  close 
watch  on  the  clock,  and  as  soon  as  half-past  nine 
came  they  were  up  and  off  helter-skelter,  as  if  the 
gloomy  precincts  of  the  shop  or  the  public-house 
were,  after  all,  less  irksome  than  the  night-school. 

There  was  no  recreation  whatever  for  the  growing 
girls,  none  for  the  grown-up  women  ;  nothing  but 
the  public-house  for  the  men,  unless  one  excepts 
the  two  or  three  occasions  during  the  winter  when 
the  more  well-to-do  residents  chose  to  give  an  enter- 
tainment in  the  schoolroom,  and  admitted  the  poor 
into  the  cheaper  seats.  Everybody  knows  the 
nature  of  these  functions.  There  were  readings  and 
recitations  ;  young  ladies  sang  drawing-room  songs 
or  played  the  violin  ;  tableaux  were  displayed  or  a 
polite  farce  was  performed ;  a  complimentary 
speech  wound  up  the  entertainment  ;  and  then  the 
performers  withdrew  again  for  several  months  into 
the  aloofness  of  their  residences,  while  the  poor  got 
through  their  winter  evenings  as  best  they  could,  in 
their  mean  cottages  or  under  the  lamp  outside  the 
public-house. 

It  was  in  full  view  of  these  circumstances  that  an 
"  Entertainment  Club  "  was  started,  with  the  idea 
of  inducing  the  cottage  people  to  help  themselves 
in  the  matter  of  recreation  instead  of  waiting  until 
it  should  please  others  to  come  and  amuse  them.  I 
am  astonished  now  to  think  how  democratic  the 
club  contrived  to  be.  In  the  fortnightly  pro- 
grammes which  were  arranged  the  performers  were 


246  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

almost  exclusively  of  the  wage-earning  sort,  and 
offers  of  help  from  "  superior  people  "  were  firmly 
declined.  And  for  at  least  one,  and,  I  think,  two 
winters,  the  experiment  was  wildly  successful — so 
successful  that,  to  the  best  of  my  recollection,  the 
"  gentry  "  were  crowded  out,  and  gave  no  enter- 
tainments at  all.  But  the  enthusiasm  could  not 
last.  During  the  third  winter  decay  set  in,  and 
early  in  the  fourth  the  club,  although  with  funds  in 
hand,  ceased  its  activities,  leaving  the  field  open,  as 
it  has  since  remained,  to  the  recognized  exponents 
of  leisured  culture. 

The  fact  is,  it  died  of  their  culture,  or  of  a  reflec- 
tion of  it.  At  the  first  nobody  had  cared  a  straw 
about  artistic  excellence.  The  homely  or  grotesque 
accomplishments  of  the  village  found  their  way 
surprisingly  on  to  a  public  platform,  and  were  not 
laughed  to  scorn  ;  anyone  who  could  sing  a  song  or 
play  a  musical  instrument — it  mattered  not  what — 
was  welcomed  and  applauded.  But  how  could  it 
go  on  ?  The  people  able  to  do  anything  at  all  were 
not  many,  and  when  their  repertory  of  songs  learnt 
by  ear  was  exhausted,  there  was  nothing  new  forth- 
coming. Gradually,  therefore,  the  club  began  to 
depend  on  the  few  members  with  a  smattering  of 
middle-class  attainments  ;  and  they,  imitating  the 
rich — asking  for  piano  accompaniments  to  their 
singing,  and  so  on — at  the  same  time  gave  themselves 
airs  of  superiority  to  the  crowd.  And  that  was 
fatal.     The  less  cultivated  behaved  in  the  manner 


THE  WANT  OF  BOOK-LEARNING      247 

usual  to  them  where  there  is  any  unwarrantable 
condescension  going — that  is  to  say,  they  kept  out 
of  the  way  of  it,  until,  finally,  the  performers  and 
organizers  had  the  club  almost  to  themselves. 
From  the  outset  the  strong  labouring  men  had  con- 
temptuously refused  to  have  anything  to  do  with 
what  was  often,  I  admit,  a  foolish  and  "  gassy  " 
affair  ;  but  their  wives  and  sons  and  daughters 
had  been  very  well  pleased,  until  the  taint  of 
superiority  drove  them  away.  The  club  died  when 
its  democratic  character  was  lost. 

Yet,  though  I  was  glad  to  have  done  with  it,  I 
have  never  regretted  the  experience.  It  is  easy  now 
to  see  the  absurdity  of  my  idea,  but  at  that  time  I 
knew  less  than  I  do  now  of  the  labouring  people's 
condition,  and  in  furthering  the  movement  I  enter- 
tained a  shadowy  hope  of  finding  amongst  the 
illiterate  villagers  some  fragment  or  other  of 
primitive  art.  It  is  almost  superfluous  to  say  that 
nothing  of  the  sort  was  found.  My  neighbours  had 
no  arts  of  their  own.  For  any  refreshment  of  that 
kind  they  were  dependent  on  the  crumbs  that  fell 
from  the  rich  man's  table,  or  on  such  cheap  refuse 
as  had  come  into  the  village  from  London  music- 
halls  or  from  the  canteens  at  Aldershot.  Street 
pianos  in  the  neighbouring  town  supplied  them  with 
popular  airs,  which  they  reproduced — it  may  be 
judged  with  what  amazing  effect — on  flute  or 
accordion  ;  but  the  repertory  of  songs  was  filled 
chiefly    from    the    sources    just    mentioned.     The 


248  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

young  men — the  shyest  creatures  in  the  country, 
and  the  most  sensitive  to  ridicule — found  safety  in 
comic  songs  which,  if  produced  badly,  raised  but 
the  greater  laugh.  Only  once  or  twice  were  these 
songs  imprudently  chosen  ;  as  a  rule,  they  dealt 
with  somebody's  misfortunes  or  discomforts,  in  a 
humorous,  practical-joking  spirit,  and  so  came 
nearer,  probably,  to  the  expression  of  a  genuine 
village  sentiment  than  anything  else  that  was  done. 
But  for  all  that  they  were  an  imported  product. 
Instead  of  an  indigenous  folk-art,  with  its  roots  in 
the  traditional  village  life,  I  found  nothing  but 
worthless  forms  of  modern  art  which  left  the 
people's  taste  quite  unfed.  Once,  it  is  true,  a  hint 
came  that,  democratic  though  the  club  might  be, 
it  was  possibly  not  democratic  enough.  A  youth 
mentioned  that  at  home  one  evening  he  and  his 
family  had  sat  round  the  table  singing  songs,  out  of 
song-books,  I  think.  It  suggested  that  there 
might  still  lurk  in  the  neglected  cottages  a  form  of 
artistic  enjoyment  more  crude  than  anything  that 
had  come  to  light,  and  perhaps  more  native  to  the 
village.  But  I  have  no  belief  that  it  was  so.  Before 
I  could  inquire  further,  this  boy  dropped  out  of 
the  movement.  When  asked  why  he  had  not  come 
to  one  entertainment,  he  said  that  he  had  been  sent 
off  late  in  the  afternoon  to  take  two  horses  miles 
away  down  the  country — I  forget  where — and  had 
been  on  the  road  most  of  the  night.  A  few  weeks 
afterwards,  turning  eighteen,  he  went  to  Aldershot 


THE  WANT  OF  BOOK-LEARNING      249 

and  enlisted.  So  far  as  I  remember,  he  was  the 
only  boy  of  the  true  labouring  class  who  ever  took 
any  active  part  in  the  proceedings — he  performed 
once  in  a  farce.  The  other  lads,  although  some  were 
sons  of  labourers  and  grandsons  of  peasants,  were 
of  those  who  had  been  apprenticed  to  trades,  and 
therefore  knew  a  little  more  than  mere  labourers, 
though  I  do  not  say  that  they  were  more  intelligent 
by  nature. 

If,  however,  they  were  the  pick  of  the  village 
youth,  the  fact  only  makes  the  more  impressive 
certain  truths  which  forced  themselves  upon  my 
notice  at  that  time  with  regard  to  the  needs  of  the 
village  since  the  old  peasant  habits  had  vanished. 
There  was  no  mistaking  it  :  intercourse  with  these 
young  men  showed  only  too  plainly  how  slow 
modern  civilization  had  been  to  follow  modern 
methods  of  industry  and  thrift.  Understand,  they 
were  well-intentioned  and  enterprising  fellows. 
They  had  begun  to  look  beyond  the  bounds  of  this 
parish,  and  to  seek  for  adaptations  to  the  larger 
world.  Moreover,  they  were  learning  trades — 
those  very  trades  which  have  since  been  introduced 
into  our  elementary  schools  as  a  means  of  quickening 
the  children's  intellectual  powers.  But  these  youths 
somehow  had  not  drawn  enlightenment  from  their 
trades,  being,  in  fact,  handicapped  all  the  time 
by  the  want  of  quite  a  different  education.  To 
put  it  rather  brutally,  they  did  not  understand 
their  own  language — the  standard  English  language 


250  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

in   which   modern  thinking   has   to  go  on  in  this 
country. 

For  several  of  the  entertainments  they  came  for- 
ward to  perform  farces.  After  the  first  diffidence 
had  worn  off,  they  took  a  keen  deHght  in  the 
preparations,  working  hard  and  cordially  ;  they  were 
singularly  ready  to  be  shown  what  to  do,  and  to  be 
criticized.  "  Knock-about  "  farce  —  the  counter- 
part in  drama  of  their  comic  songs — pleased  them 
best,  and  they  did  well  in  it.  But  "  Box  and  Cox  " 
was  almost  beyond  them,  because  they  missed  the 
meanings  of  the  rather  stilted  dialogue.  In  helping 
to  coach  them  in  their  parts  I  had  the  best  of  oppor- 
tunities to  know  this.  They  produced  a  resem- 
blance to  the  sound  of  the  sentences,  and  were 
satisfied,  though  they  missed  the  sense.  Instead  of 
saying  that  he  "  divested  "  himself  of  his  clothing, 
Mr.  Box — or  was  it  Cox  ? — said  that  he  "  invested  " 
himself,  and  no  correction  could  cure  him  of  saying 
that.  When  one  of  them  came  to  describing  the 
lady's  desperate  wooing  of  him,  "  to  escape  her  im- 
portunities "  is  what  he  should  have  said  ;  but  what 
he  did  say  was  "  to  escape  our  opportunities  " — an 
error  which  the  audience,  fortunately,  failed  to 
notice,  for  it  slipped  out  again  at  the  time  of  per- 
formance, after  having  been  repeatedly  put  right  at 
rehearsal.  And  this  sort  of  thing  happened  all 
through  the  piece.  Almost  invariably  the  points 
which  depended  on  a  turn  of  phrase  were  lost.  "  I 
at  once  give  you  warning  that  I  give  you  warning  at 


THE  WANT  OF  BOOK-LEARNING      251 

once  "  became,  "  I  at  once  give  you  warning.  That 
is,  I  give  you  warning  at  once."  Cox  (or  Box) 
reading  the  lawyer's  letter,  never  made  out  the 
following  passage  :  "I  soon  discovered  her  will, 
the  following  extract  from  which  will,  I  am  sure, 
give  you  satisfaction."  It  was  plain  that  he 
thought  the  second  word  "  will  "  meant  the  same 
as  the  first. 

As  evidence  of  a  lack  of  "  book-learning  "  in  the 
village,  this  might  have  been  insufficient,  had  it 
stood  alone.  But  it  did  not.  The  misbehaviour  of 
the  boys  at  the  night-school  has  been  mentioned. 
Being  a  member  of  the  school  managing  committee, 
I  went  in  to  the  school  occasionally,  and  what  I  saw 
left  me  satisfied  that  a  large  part  of  the  master's 
difficulty  arose  from  the  unfamiliarity  of  the 
scholars  with  their  own  language.  That  initial 
ignorance  blocked  the  road  to  science  even  more 
completely  than,  in  the  Entertainment  Club,  it  did 
to  art.  "  The  Science  of  Horticulture  "  was  the 
subject  of  the  lesson  on  one  dismal  evening,  this 
being  the  likeliest  of  some  half-dozen  "  practical 
sciences "  prescribed  for  village  choice  by  the 
educational  authority  at  Whitehall.  About  twenty 
"  students,"  ranging  from  sixteen  to  nineteen  years 
old,  were — no,  not  puzzling  over  it  :  they  were 
"  putting  in  time  "  as  perfunctorily  as  they  dared, 
making  the  lesson  an  excuse  for  being  present 
together  in  a  warmed  and  lighted  room.  When  I 
went  in  it  was  near  the  close  of  the  evening  ;  new 


252  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

matter  was  being  entered  upon,  apparently  as  an 
introduction  to  the  next  week's  lesson.  I  stood 
and  watched.  The  master  called  upon  first  one, 
then  another,  to  read  aloud  a  sentence  or  two  out 
of  the  textbook  with  which  each  was  provided  ;  and 
one  after  another  the  boys  stood  up,  shamefaced 
or  dogged,  to  stumble  through  sentences  which 
seemed  to  convey  absolutely  no  meaning  to  them. 
If  it  had  been  only  the  hard  words  that  floored 
them — such  as  "  cotyledon  "  and  "  dicotyledon  " — 
I  should  not  have  been  surprised  ;  but  they  blun- 
dered over  the  ordinary  English,  and  had  next  to 
no  sense  of  the  meaning  of  punctuation.  I  admit 
that  probably  they  were  not  trying  to  do  their  best ; 
that  they  might  have  put  on  a  little  intentional 
clumsiness,  in  the  instinctive  hope  of  escaping 
derision  by  being  thought  waggish.  But  the  pity 
of  it  was  that  they  should  need  to  protect  themselves 
so.  They  had  not  the  rudimentary  accomplish- 
ment :  that  was  the  plain  truth.  They  could  not 
understand  ordinary  printed  English. 

Of  science,  of  course,  they  were  learning  nothing. 
They  may  have  taken  away  from  those  lessons  a 
few  elementary  scientific  terms,  and  possibly  they 
got  hold  of  the  idea  of  the  existence  of  some  mys- 
terious knowledge  that  was  not  known  in  the 
village  ;  but  the  advantage  ended  there.  I  doubt 
if  a  single  member  of  the  class  had  begun  to  use  his 
brain  in  a  scientific  way,  reasoning  from  cause  to 
effect  ;  I  doubt  if  it  dawned  upon  one  of  them  that 


THE  WANT  OF  BOOK-LEARNING      253 

there  was  such  an  unheard-of  accompHshment  to 
be  acquired.  They  were  trying — if  they  were 
trying  anything  at  all — to  pick  up  modern  science 
in  the  folk  manner,  by  rote,  as  though  it  were  a 
thing  to  be  handed  down  by  tradition.  So  at  least 
I  infer,  not  only  from  watching  this  particular  class 
then  and  on  other  occasions,  but  also  from  the 
following  circumstance. 

At  Christmastime  in  one  of  these  winters  a  few 
of  the  boys  of  the  night-school  went  round  the 
village,  mumming.  They  performed  the  same  old 
piece  that  Mr.  Hardy  has  described  in  "  The  Return 
of  the  Native  " — the  same  old  piece  that,  as  a 
little  child,  I  witnessed  years  ago  in  a  real  village ; 
but  it  had  degenerated  lamentably.  The  boys  said 
that  they  had  learnt  it  from  an  elder  brother  of  one 
of  them,  and  had  practised  it  in  a  shed  ;  and  at 
my  request  the  leader  consented  to  write  out  the 
piece,  and  in  due  time  he  brought  me  his  copy. 
I  have  mislaid  the  thing,  and  write  from  memory  ; 
but  I  recall  enough  of  it  to  afhrm  that  he  had  never 
understood,  or  even  cared  to  fix  a  meaning  to,  the 
words — or  sounds,  rather — which  he  and  his  com- 
panions had  gabbled  through  as  they  prowled 
around  the  kitchen  clashing  their  wooden  swords. 
That  St.  George  had  become  King  William  was 
natural  enough  ;  but  what  is  to  be  said  of  changing 
the  Turkish  Knight  into  the  Turkey  Snipe  ?  That 
was  one  of  the  "  howlers  "  this  youth  perpetrated, 
amongst  man}^  others  less  striking,   perhaps,   but 


254  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

not  less  instructive.  The  whole  thing  showed 
plainly  where  the  difficulty  lay  at  the  night-school. 
The  breaking  up  of  the  traditional  life  of  the  village 
had  failed  to  supply  the  boys  either  with  the  lan- 
guage or  with  the  mental  habits  necessary  for  living 
successfully  under  the  new  conditions.  Some  of 
these  boys  were  probably  the  sons  of  parents  unable 
to  read  and  write  ;  none  of  them  came  from  families 
where  those  accomplishments  were  habitually  prac- 
tised or  much  esteemed. 

The  argument,  thus  illustrated  by  the  state  of  the 
boys,  extends  in  its  application  to  practically  the 
whole  of  the  village.  "  Book-learning  "  had  been 
very  unimportant  to  the  peasant  with  his  tra- 
ditional lore,  but  it  would  be  hard  to  exaggerate 
the  handicap  against  which  the  modern  labourer 
strives,  for  want  of  it.  Look  once  more  at  his 
position.  In  the  new  circumstance  the  man  lives 
in  an  environment  never  dreamt  of  by  the  peasant. 
Economic  influences  affecting  him  most  closely 
come,  as  it  were,  vibrating  upon  him  from  across  the 
sea.  Vast  commercial  and  social  movements,  unfelt 
in  the  valley  under  the  old  system,  are  altering  all 
its  character  ;  instead  of  being  one  of  a  group  of 
villagers  tolerably  independent  of  the  rest  of  the 
world,  he  is  entangled  in  a  network  of  economic 
forces  as  wide  as  the  nation ;  and  yet,  to  hold  his 
own  in  this  new  environment,  he  has  no  new  guid- 
ance. Parochial  customs  and  the  traditions  of  the 
village  make  up  the  chief  part  of  his  equipment. 


THE  WANT  OF  BOOK-LEARNING      255 

But  for  national  intercourse  parochial  customs 
and  traditions  are  almost  worse  than  none  at  all — 
like  a  Babel  of  Tongues.  National  standards  have 
to  be  set  up.  We  cannot,  for  instance,  deal  in 
Winchester  quarts  and  Cheshire  acres,  in  long 
hundreds  and  baker's  dozens  ;  we  have  no  use  for 
weights  and  measures  that  vary  from  county  to 
county,  or  for  a  token  coinage  that  is  only  vaHd  in 
one  town  or  in  one  trade.  But  most  of  all,  for 
making  our  modern  arrangements  a  standard 
English  language  is  so  necessary  that  those  who  are 
unfamiliar  with  it  can  neither  manage  their  own 
affairs  efficiently  nor  take  their  proper  share  in  the 
national  life. 

And  this  is  the  situation  of  the  labourer  to-day. 
The  weakness  of  it,  moreover,  is  in  almost  daily 
evidence.  One  would  have  thought  that  at  least 
in  a  man's  own  parish  and  his  own  private  concerns 
illiteracy  would  be  no  disadvantage  ;  yet,  in  fact, 
it  hampers  him  on  every  side.  Whether  he  would 
join  a  benefit  society,  or  obtain  poor-law  relief,  or 
insure  the  lives  of  his  children,  or  bury  his  dead,  or 
take  up  a  small  holding,  he  finds  that  he  must 
follow  a  nationalized  or  standardized  procedure,  set 
forth  in  language  which  his  forefathers  never  heard 
spoken  and  never  learned  to  read.  Even  in  the 
things  that  are  really  of  the  village  the  same  con- 
ditions prevail.  The  slate-club  is  managed  upon 
lines  as  businesslike  as  those  of  the  national  benefit 
society.     The   "  Institute  "   has  its  secretary,   and 


256  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

treasurer,  and  balance-sheet,  and  printed  rules ; 
the  very  cricket  club  is  controlled  by  resolutions 
proposed  and  seconded  at  formal  committee  meet- 
ings, and  duly  entered  in  minute-books.  But  all 
this  is  a  new  thing  in  the  village,  and  no  guidance  for 
it  is  to  be  found  in  the  lingering  peasant  traditions. 
To  this  day,  therefore,  the  majority  of  my  neigh- 
bours, whose  ability  for  the  work  they  have  been 
prepared  to  do  proves  them  to  be  no  fools,  are, 
nevertheless,  pitiably  helpless  in  the  management  of 
their  own  affairs.  Most  disheartening  it  is,  too, 
for  those  whose  help  they  seek,  to  work  with  themi. 
In  the  cricket-club  committee,  on  which  I  served 
for  a  year  or  two,  it  was  noticeable  that  the  mem- 
bers, eager  for  proper  arrangements  to  be  made, 
often  sat  tongue-tied  and  glum,  incapable  of  urging 
their  views,  so  that  only  after  the  meeting  had 
broken  up  and  they  had  begun  talking  with  one 
another  did  one  learn  that  the  resolutions  which  had 
been  passed  were  not  to  their  mind.  Formalities 
puzzled  them — seemed  to  strike  them  as  futilities. 
And  so  in  other  matters  besides  cricket.  A  local 
builder — a  man  of  blameless  integrity — had  a 
curious  experience.  Somewhat  against  his  wishes, 
he  was  appointed  treasurer  of  the  village  Lodge  of 
Oddfellows  ;  but  when,  inheriting  a  considerable 
sum  of  money,  he  began  to  buy  land  and  build 
houses,  nothing  would  persuade  the  illiterate  mem- 
bers of  the  society  that  he  was  not  speculating  with 
their  funds.     Audited  accounts  had  no  meaning  for 


THE  WANT  OF  BOOK-LEARNING      257 

them  ;  possibly  the  fact  that  Le  was  doing  a  service 
for  no  pay  struck  them  as  suspicious ;  at  any  rate 
they  murmured  so  openly  that  he  threw  up  his 
office.  Whom  they  have  got  in  his  place,  and 
whether  they  are  suspicious  of  him  too,  I  do  not 
know.  My  point  is  that,  while  modern  thrift 
obliges  them  to  enter  into  these  fellowships,  they 
remain,  for  mere  want  of  book-learning,  unable  to 
help  themselves,  and  dependent  on  the  aid  of  friends 
from  the  middle  or  employing  classes.  In  other 
words,  the  greater  number  of  the  Englishmen  in 
the  village  have  to  stand  aside  and  see  their  own 
affairs  controlled  for  them  by  outsiders. 

This  is  so  wholly  the  case  in  some  matters  that 
nobody  ever  dreams  of  consulting  the  people  who 
are  chiefly  concerned  in  them.  In  the  education 
of  their  children,  for  one  thing,  they  have  no  voice 
at  all.  It  is  administered  in  a  standardized  form 
by  a  committee  of  middle-class  people  appointed 
in  the  neighbouring  town,  who  carry  out  pro- 
visions which  originate  from  unapproachable  per- 
manent officials  at  Whitehall.  The  County  Council 
may  modify  the  programme  a  little  ;  His  Majesty's 
inspectors — strangers  to  the  people,  and  ignorant 
of  their  needs — issue  fiats  in  the  form  of  advice  to 
the  school  teachers  ;  and  meanwhile  the  parents  of 
the  children  acquiesce,  not  always  approving  what 
is  done,  but  accepting  it  as  if  it  were  a  law  of  fate 
that  all  such  things  must  be  arranged  over  their 
heads  by  the  classes  who  have  book-learning. 


258  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

And  this  customary  attitude  of  waiting  for  what 
the  "  educated  "  may  do  for  them  renders  them 
apathetic  where    they  might  be,  and  where  it  is 
highly  important  that  they  should  be,  reliant  upon 
their  own  initiative — I  mean,   in  political  action. 
The  majority  of  the  labourers  in  the  village  have 
extremely    crude    ideas    of   representative   govern- 
ment.    A  candidate  for  Parliament  is  not,  in  their 
eyes,  a  servant  whom  they  may  appoint  to  give 
voice  to  their  own  wishes  ;  he  is  a  "  gentleman  " 
who,  probably  from  motives  of  self-interest,  comes 
to  them   as  a  sort  of  quack  doctor,   with  occult 
remedies,  which  they  may  have  if  they  will  vote  for 
him,    and   which   might    possibly   do    them   good. 
Hence  they  hardly  look  upon  the  Government  as  an 
instrument  at  all  under  the  control  of  people  like 
themselves  ;  they  view  it,  rather,  as  a  sort  of  benevo- 
lent tyranny,  whose  constitution  is  no  concern  of 
theirs.     Commons  or  Lords,   Liberals  or  Tories — 
what  does  it  matter  to  the  labourer  which  of  them 
has  the  power,  so  long  as  one  or  other  will  cast  an 
occasional    look   in   his    direction,    and    try    to  do 
something  or  other  to  help  him  ?     What  they  should 
do  rests  with  the  politicians  :  it  is  their  part  to 
suggest,  the  labourer's  to  acquiesce. 

Such  are  some  of  the  more  obvious  disabilities 
from  which  the  cottage  people  suffer,  largely  for 
want  of  book-learning.  I  think,  however,  that  they 
are  beginning  to  be  aware  of  the  disadvantage,  for, 
though  they  say  little  about  it,   I  have  heard  of 


THE  WANT  OF  BOOK-LEARNING      259 

several  men  getting  their  children  to  teach  them,  in 
the  evening,  the  lessons  learnt  at  school  during  the 
day.  Certainly  the  old  contempt  for  "  book-learn- 
ing "  is  dying  out.  And  now  and  then  one  hears  the 
most  ingenuous  confessions  of  incompetence  to 
understand  matters  of  admitted  interest.  An  old 
woman,  discussing  "  Tariff  Reform,"  said  :  "  We 
sort  o'  people  can't  understand  it  for  ourselves. 
What  we  wants  is  for  somebody  to  come  and  ex- 
plain it  to  us.  And  then,"  she  added,  "  we  dunno 
whether  we  dares  believe  what  they  says."  If  you 
could  hear  one  even  of  the  better-taught  labourers 
tr3dng  to  read  out  something  from  a  newspaper,  you 
would  appreciate  his  difficulties.  He  goes  too 
slowly  to  get  the  sense  ;  the  end  of  a  paragraph  is 
too  far  off  from  the  beginning  of  it  ;  the  thread  of 
the  argument  is  lost  sight  of.  An  allusion,  a 
metaphor,  a  parenthesis,  may  easily  make  nonsense 
of  the  whole  thing  to  a  reader  who  has  never  heard 
of  the  subject  alluded  to,  or  of  the  images  called 
up  by  the  metaphor,  and  whose  mind  is  unaccus- 
tomed to  those  actions  of  pausing  circumspection 
which  a  parenthesis  demands. 


XIX 

EMOTIONAL  STARVATION 

Remembering  the  tales  which  get  into  the  papers 
now  and  then  of  riot  amongst  the  "  high-spirited 
young  gentlemen  "  at  the  Universities,  I  am  a  little 
unwilling  to  say  more  about  the  unruliness  of  our 
village  youths,  as  though  it  were  something  peculiar 
to  their  rank  of  life.  Yet  it  must  not  be  quite  passed 
over.  To  be  sure,  not  all  the  village  lads,  any  more 
than  all  undergraduates,  are  turbulent  and  mis- 
chievous ;  yet  here,  as  at  Oxford,  there  is  a  minority 
who  apparently  think  it  manly  to  be  insubordinate 
and  to  give  trouble,  while  here,  just  as  there,  the 
better  sense  of  the  majority  is  too  feeble  to  make  up 
a  public  opinion  which  the  offenders  would  be  afraid 
to  defy.  The  disorder  of  the  village  lads  was 
noticeable  long  ago  at  the  night-school ;  for  ex- 
ample, on  an  evening  shortly  after  the  "  Khaki  " 
election,  when  Mr.  Brodrick  (now  Lord  Midleton) 
had  been  re-elected  for  this  division.  On  that 
evening  a  lecture  on  Norway,  illustrated  by  lantern 
slides,  could  hardly  be  got  through  owing  to  the 
liveliness  of  a  few  lads,  who  amused  all  their  com- 
rades by  letting  off  volleys  of  electioneering  cries. 

260 


EMOTIONAL  STARVATION  261 

I  have  forgotten  who  the  lecturer  was,  but  I  re- 
member well  how  the  shouts  of  "  Good  old  Brod- 
rick  !"  often  prevailed,  so  that  one  could  not  hear 
the  man's  voice.  Since  then  there  have  been  more 
striking  examples  of  the  same  sort  of  vivacity. 
Not  two  winters  ago  the  weekly  meetings  of  a 
"  boys'  club,"  which  aimed  only  to  help  the  village 
lads  pass  an  evening  sensibly,  had  to  be  abandoned, 
owing  to  the  impossible  behaviour  of  the  members. 
One  week  I  heard  that  they  had  run  amok  amongst 
the  furniture  of  the  schoolroom  where  the  meetings 
were  held  ;  on  the  next,  they  blew  out  the  lamps, 
and  locked  one  of  the  organizers  into  the  room  for 
an  hour  ;  and  a  week  or  two  afterwards  they  piled 
window-curtains  and  door-mats  on  to  the  fire,  and 
nearly  got  the  building  ablaze.  In  short,  to  judge 
from  what  was  told  me,  there  seems  to  have  been 
little  to  distinguish  them  from  frolicsome  under- 
graduates, save  their  poverty-stricken  clothes  and 
their  unaspirated  speech.  It  is  true  they  kept  their 
excesses  within  doors,  but  then,  they  had  no 
influential  relatives  to  take  their  part  against  an 
interfering  police  force ;  and  moreover,  most  of 
them  came  to  the  meetings  a  little  subdued  by  ten 
hours  or  so  of  work  at  wage-earning.  Still,  their 
"  high  spirits  "  were  in  evidence,  uncontrolled — 
just  as  elsewhere — by  any  high  sentiment.  The 
sense  of  personal  responsibility  for  their  actions, 
the  power  to  understand  that  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  "  playing  the  game  "   even  towards  people  in 


262  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

authority  or  towards  the  general  pubHc,  seemed  to 
be  as  foreign  to  them  as  if  they  had  never  had  to 
soil  their  hands  with  hard  work. 

Whatever  may  be  the  case  with  others,  in  the 
village  lads  a  merely  intellectual  unpreparedness 
is  doubtless  partly  accountable  for  this  behaviour. 
The  villagers  having  had  no  previous  experience  of 
action  in  groups,  unless  under  compulsion  like  that 
of  the  railway-ganger  or  of  the  schoolmaster  with 
his  cane,  it  is  strange  now  to  the  boys  to  find  them- 
selves at  a  school  where  there  is  no  compulsion,  but 
all  is  left  to  their  voluntary  effort.  And  stranger 
still  is  the  club.  A  formal  society,  dependent 
wholly  on  the  loyal  co-operation  of  its  members 
and  yet  enforcing  no  obvious  discipline  upon  them, 
is  a  novelty  in  village  life.  The  idea  of  it  is  an 
abstraction,  and  because  the  old-fashioned  half- 
peasant  people  fifty  years  ago  never  needed  to 
think  about  abstractions  at  all,  it  turns  out  now 
that  no  family  habit  of  mind  for  grasping  such  ideas 
has  come  down  from  them  to  their  grandsons. 

This  mental  inefficiency,  however,  is  only  a  form 
— a  definite  form  for  once — of  a  more  vague  but 
more  prevalent  backwardness.  The  fact  is  that  the 
old  ideas  of  conduct  in  general  are  altogether  too 
restricted  for  the  new  requirements,  so  that  the 
village  life  suffers  throughout  from  a  sort  of  ethical 
starvation.  I  gladly  admit  that,  for  the  day's 
work  and  its  hardships,  the  surviving  sentiments 
in  favour  of  industry,  patience,  good-humour,  and 


EMOTIONAL  STARVATION  263 

so  on,  still  are  strong  ;  and  I  do  not  forget  the 
admirable  spirit  of  the  cottage  women  in  particular  ; 
yet  it  is  true  that  for  the  wider  experiences  of  modern 
life  other  sentiments  or  ideals,  in  addition  to  those 
of  the  peasants,  need  development,  and  that  pro- 
gress in  them  is  behindhand  in  the  village.  What 
the  misbehaviour  of  the  village  boys  illustrates  in 
one  direction  may  be  seen  in  other  directions 
amongst  the  men  and  women  and  children. 

Like  other  people,  the  cottagers  have  their  emo- 
tional susceptibilities,  which,  however,  are  either 
more  robust  than  other  people's  or  else  more 
sluggish.  At  any  rate  it  takes  more  than  a  little 
to  disturb  them.  During  last  winter  I  heard  of  a 
man — certainly  he  was  one  of  the  older  sort,  good 
at  many  an  obsolete  rural  craft — who  had  had 
chilblains  burst  on  his  fingers,  and  had  sewn  up  the 
wounds  himself  with  needle  and  cotton.  There  is 
no  suspicion  of  inhumanity  against  him,  yet  it 
seemed  to  me  that  in  fiercer  times  he  would  have 
made  a  willing  torturer  ;  and  other  little  incidents — 
all  of  them  recent  ones  too — came  back  to  my 
mind  when  I  heard  of  him.  In  one  of  these  a 
servant-girl  from  the  village  was  concerned — a 
quiet  and  timid  girl  she  was  said  to  be  ;  yet,  on  her 
own  initiative,  and  without  consulting  her  mistress, 
she  drowned  a  stray  cat  which  was  trying  to  get  a 
footing  in  the  household.  Again,  I  myself  heard 
and  wondered  at  the  happy  prattle  of  two  little 


264  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

girls — the  children,  they,  of  a  most  conscientious 
man  and  woman — as  they  told  of  the  fun  they  had 
enjoyed,  along  with  their  father  and  mother,  in 
watching  a  dog  worry  a  hedgehog.  And  yet  it  is 
plain  enough  that  the  faculty  for  compassion  and 
kindness  is  inborn  in  the  villagers,  so  that  their 
susceptibilities  might  just  as  well  be  keen  as  blunt. 
In  their  behaviour  to  their  pets  the  gentle  hands 
and  the  caressing  voices  betoken  a  great  natural 
aptitude  for  tenderness.  And  not  to  their  pets 
only.  AU  one  afternoon  I  heard,  proceeding  from 
a  pig-stye,  the  voice  of  an  elderly  man  who  was 
watching  an  ailing  sow  there.  "  Come  on,  ol' 
gal  .  .  .  come  on,  ol'  gal,"  he  said,  over  and  over 
again  in  tireless  repetition,  as  sympathetically  as 
if  he  were  talking  to  a  child.  Where  the  people 
fail  in  sensitiveness  is  from  a  want  of  imagination, 
as  we  say,  though  we  should  say,  rather,  a  want 
of  suppleness  in  their  ideas.  They  can  sympathize 
when  their  own  dog  or  cat  is  suffering,  because  use 
has  wakened  up  their  powers  in  that  direction  ; 
but  they  do  not  abstract  the  idea  of  suffering  life 
and  apply  it  to  the  tormented  hedgehog,  because 
their  ideas  have  not  been  practised  upon  imagined 
or  non-existent  things  in  such  a  way  as  to  become, 
as  it  were,  a  detached  power  of  understanding, 
generally  applicable. 

But  is  it  to  be  wondered  at  if  some  unlovely 
features  appear  in  the  village  character  ?     Or  is 


EMOTIONAL  STARVATION  265 

it  not  rather   a  circumstance   to  give   one   pause, 
that  these  commercially  unsuccessful  and  socially 
neglected    people,    whose   large   families   the   self- 
satisfied    eugenist  views    with    such    solemn    mis- 
givings, should  be  in  the  main  so  kindly,  so  generous, 
and  sometimes  so  lofty  in  their  sentiments  as  in 
fact   they  are  ?     With   like   disadvantages,   where 
are  there  any  other  people  in  the  country  who 
would  do  so  bravely  ?     If  it  is  clear  that  they  miss 
a  rich  development  of  their  susceptibilities,  a  reason 
why  is  no  less  clear.     I  have  just  hinted  at  it.     The 
ample  explanation  is  in  the  fact  that  they  have 
hardly  any  imaginary  or  non-existent  subjects  upon 
which  to  exercise  emotional  sensibility  for  its  own 
sake,  so  that  it  may  grow  strong  and  fine  by  fre- 
quent practice  ;  but  they  have  to  wait  for  some  real 
thing  to  move  them — some  distressful  occurrence 
in  the  valley  itself,  like  that  mentioned  earlier  in 
this  book,  when  a  man  trimming  a  hedge  all  but 
killed  his  own  child,  and  a  thrill  of  horror  shud- 
dered through  the  cottages.     Of  matters  like  this 
the  people  talk  with  an  excited  fascination,  there 
being  so  little  else  to  stir  them.     Instead  of  the 
moving  accident  by  flood  or  field,  they  have  the 
squalid    or    merely    agonizing    accident.     Sickness 
amongst    friends    or    neighbours    affords    another 
topic   upon   which   their   emotion   seeks   exercise : 
they  linger  over  the  discussion  of  it,   talking   in 
moaning  tones  instinctively  intended  to  stimulate 
feeling.     Then  there  are  police-court  cases.     Some 


266  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

man  gets  drunk,  and  is  fined  ;  or  cannot  pay  his 
rent,  and  is  turned  out  of  his  cottage  ;  or  misbehaves 
in  such  a  way  that  he  is  sent  to  gaol.  The  talk  of 
it  threads  its  swift  way  about  the  village — goes  into 
intimate  details,  too,  relating  how  the  culprit's 
wife  "  took  on  "  when  her  man  was  sentenced  ;  or 
how  his  children  suffer  ;  or  perhaps  how  the  magis- 
trates bullied  him,  or  how  he  insulted  the  prose- 
cuting lawyer. 

It  is  natural  that  the  people  should  be  greedy 
readers  (when  they  can  read  at  all)  of  the  sen- 
sational matter  supplied  by  newspapers.  Earth- 
quakes, railway  disasters,  floods,  hurricanes,  excite 
them  not  really  disagreeably.  So,  too,  does  it 
animate  them  to  hear  of  prodigies  and  freaks  of 
Nature,  as  when,  a  little  while  ago,  the  papers  told 
of  a  man  whose  flesh  turned  "  like  marble,"  so  that 
he  could  not  bend  his  limbs  for  fear  lest  they  should 
snap.  Anything  to  wonder  at  will  serve  ;  anything 
about  which  they  can  exclaim.  That  feeling  of  the 
crowd  when  fireworks  call  forth  the  fervent  "  0-oh  !" 
of  admiration,  is  the  village  feeling  which  delights 
in  portents  of  whatever  kind.  But  nothing  else  is 
quite  so  effectual  to  that  end  as  are  crimes  of  violence, 
and  especially  murder.  For,  after  all,  it  is  the  human 
element  that  counts ;  and  these  descendants  of 
peasants,  having  no  fictitious  means  of  acquainting 
themselves  with  human  passion  and  sentiment, 
such  as  novels  and  dramas  supply  in  such  abun- 
dance   to    other   people,   turn   with    all    the   more 


EMOTIONAL  STARVATION  2C7 

avidity  to  the  unchosen  and  unprepared  food  fur- 
nished to  their  starving  faculties  by  contemporary 
crime. 

There  is,  indeed,  another  side  to  their  sensational- 
ism which  should  be  noticed.  I  was  a  little  startled 
some  years  ago  by  a  scrap  of  conversation  between 
two  women.  The  papers  at  that  time  were  full  of  a 
murder  which  had  been  committed  in  a  village 
neighbouring  this,  the  young  man  accused  of  it  being 
even  then  on  his  trial.  It  was  in  the  evidence  that 
he  had  visited  his  home  quite  an  hour  after  the  time 
when  the  deed  must  have  been  done,  and  these 
women  were  discussing  that  point,  one  of  them 
saying  :  "  I  don't  believe  my  boy  would  ha'  come 
'ome  that  Sunday  night  if  he'd  ha'  done  it."  It  was 
surprising  to  me  to  hear  a  respectable  mother 
speculate  as  to  how  her  own  son  would  behave  in 
such  a  case,  or  contemplate  even  the  possibility  of 
his  being  guilty  of  murder  ;  and  I  thought  it  all  too 
practical  a  way  of  considering  the  subject.  But  it 
revealed  how  appallingly  real  such  things  may  be  to 
people  who,  as  I  tried  to  show  farther  back,  have 
reason  to  feel  a  little  like  an  alien  race  under  our 
middle-class  law.  Very  often  one  may  discern  this 
personal  or  practical  point  of  view  in  their  sen- 
sationalism :  they  indulge  it  chiefly  for  the  sake 
of  excitement,  but  with  a  side  glance  at  the  bearing 
which  the  issue  may  have  upon  their  own  affairs. 
In  a  foul  case  which  was  dealt  with  under  the 
Criminal  Law  Amendment  Act,  large  numbers  of 


268  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

our  cottage  women  flocked  to  the  town  to  hear 
the  trial,  attracted  partly  by  the  hope  of  sensa- 
tion, of  course,  but  also  very  largely  actuated  by 
a  sentiment  of  revenge  against  the  offender  ;  for 
here  the  safety  of  their  own  young  daughters  was 
involved. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  still  it  is  true  that  the  two  sources 
I  have  mentioned — namely,  the  sensational  news  in 
the  papers  and  the  distresses  and  misdemeanours 
in  the  village  itself — supply  practically  all  that  the 
average  cottager  gets  to  touch  his  sentiments  and 
emotions  into  life  ;  and  it  is  plain  enough  that  from 
neither  of  these  sources,  even  when  supplemented 
by  a  fine  traditional  family  life,  can  a  very  desirable 
spiritual  nourishment  be  obtained.  "  Real  "  enough 
the  fare  is,  in  all  conscience  ;  but,  as  usual  with 
realities  of  that  sort,  it  wants  choiceness.  It  pro- 
vides plenty  of  objects  for  compassion,  for  anxiety, 
for  contempt,  for  ridicule  even,  but  very  little  for 
emulation,  for  reverence.  The  sentiments  of  ad- 
miration and  chivalry,  the  enthusiastic  emotions, 
are  hardly  ever  aroused  in  man  or  woman,  boy  or 
girl,  in  the  village.  Nothing  occurs  in  the  natural 
course  to  bring  what  is  called  "  good  form  "  into 
notice  and  make  it  attractive,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  means  of  bringing  this  about  by  art  demand 
more  money,  more  leisure  and  seclusion,  more  book- 
learning  too,  than  the  average  labourer  can  obtain. 
In  the  middle-classes  this  is  not  the  case.  It  is  true 
that  the  middle-classes  have  little  to  boast  of  in  this 


EMOTIONAL  STARVATION  269 

respect,  but  generous  ideas  of  modesty  and  rever- 
ence, and  of  "  playing  the  game,"  and  of  public 
duty,  and  of  respect  for  womanhood,  have  at  least 
a  chance  of  spreading  amongst  boys  and  girls,  in 
households  where  art  and  books  are  valued,  and 
where  other  things  are  talked  of  than  the  sordid 
scandals  of  the  valley  and  of  the  police-courts. 
The  difference  that  the  want  of  this  help  may  make 
was  brought  forcibly  home  to  me  one  day.  I  came 
upon  a  group  of  village  boys  at  play  in  the  road,  just 
as  one  of  them — a  fellow  about  thirteen  years  old — 
conceived  a  bright  idea  for  a  new  game.  "  Now  I'll 
be  a  murderer  !"  he  cried,  waving  his  arms  fero- 
ciously. 

There  are  other  circumstances  that  tend  to  keep 
the  standard  of  sentiment  low.  As  the  boys  begin 
to  work  for  money  at  so  early  an  age,  the  money- 
value  of  conduct  impresses  itself  strongly  upon 
them,  and  they  soon  learn  to  think  more  of  what 
they  can  get  than  of  what  they  can  do  or  are  worth. 
And  while  they  have  lost  all  the  steadying  influence 
that  used  to  flow  from  the  old  peasant  crafts,  they 
get  none  of  the  steadiness  which  would  come  from 
continuity  of  employment.  The  work  they  do  as 
errand-boys  calls  neither  for  skill  in  which  they  might 
take  pride  nor  for  constancy  to  any  one  master  ; 
but  it  encourages  them  to  be  mannish  and  "  know- 
ing "  long  before  their  time.  Of  course  the  more 
generous  sentiments  are  at  a  discount  under  such 
conditions. 


2/0  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

Then,  too,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the 
"  superior  "  attitude  of  the  employing  classes  has 
its  injurious  effect  upon  the  village  character.  The 
youth  who  sees  his  father  and  mother  and  sisters 
treated  as  inferiors,  and  finds  that  he  is  treated  so 
too,  is  led  unconsciously  to  take  a  low  view  of  what 
is  due  either  to  himself  or  to  his  friends.  The  sort 
of  view  he  takes  may  be  seen  in  his  behaviour.  The 
gangs  of  boys  who  troop  and  lounge  about  the  roads 
on  Sundays  are  generally  being  merely  silly  in  the 
endeavour  to  be  witty.  They  laugh  loudly,  yet  not 
humorously  and  kindly  (one  very  rarely  hears 
really  jolly  laughter  in  the  village),  but  in  derision 
of  one  another  or  of  the  wayfarers — ^girls  by  prefer- 
ence. So  far  as  one  can  overhear  it,  their  fun  is 
always  of  that  contumacious  character,  and  it 
must  be  deadly  to  any  sentiment  of  modesty,  or 
honour,  or  reverence. 

It  requires  but  little  penetration  to  see  how  these 
circumstances  react  upon  the  village  girls.  The 
frolicsome  and  giddy  appear  to  enjoy  themselves 
much  as  the  boys  do,  but  the  position  must  be  cruel 
to  those  of  a  serious  tendency.  To  be  treated  with 
disrespect  and  be  made  the  subjects  of  rough  wit  as 
they  go  about  is  only  the  more  acute  part  of  their 
difficulty.  One  may  suppose  that  at  home  they  find 
little  appreciation  of  any  high  sentiments,  but  are 
driven,  in  self-defence,  to  be  rather  flippant,  rather 
"  worldly."  The  greater  number  of  house  mistresses, 
meanwhile,  if  one  may  judge  from  their  own  com- 


EMOTIONAL  STARVATION  271 

placent  conversation,  behave  in  a  way  most  unlikely 
to  contribute  to  their  servants'  self-respect.  It  is 
hard  to  believe  that  any  really  high  sentiment  is  to 
be  learnt  from  women  who,  for  all  the  world  as  if 
they  were  village  louts,  make  light  of  a  girl's  feehngs, 
and  regard  her  love-affairs  especially  as  a  proper 
subject  for  ridicule  or  for  suspicion. 


XX 

THE  CHILDREN'S  NEED 

As  one  of  the  managing  committee  of  the  village 
schools  for  a  good  many  years,  I  have  had  con- 
siderable opportunity  of  watching  the  children  col- 
lectively. The  circumstances,  perhaps,  are  not 
altogether  favourable  to  the  formation  of  trust- 
worthy opinions.  Seen  in  large  numbers,  and  under 
discipline  too,  the  children  look  too  much  alike  ; 
one  misses  the  infinite  variety  of  their  personalities 
such  as  would  appear  in  them  at  home.  On  the 
other  hand,  characteristics  common  to  them  all, 
which  might  pass  unnoticed  in  individuals,  become 
obvious  enough  when  there  are  many  children 
together. 

In  the  main  the  "  stock  "  has  always  seemed  to 
me  good,  and  to  some  extent  my  impression  is 
supported  by  the  results  of  the  medical  inspection 
now  undertaken  at  the  schools  by  the  County 
Council.  Such  defects  as  the  doctor  finds  are 
generally  of  no  deep-seated  kind  :  bad  teeth,  faulty 
vision  (often  due,  probably,  to  improper  use  of  the 
eyes  in  school),  scalp  troubles,  running  ears,  ade- 
noids, and  so  on,  are  the  commonest.     Insufficient 

272 


THE  CHILDREN'S  NEED  273 

nutrition  is  occasionally  reported.  In  fact  the 
medical  evidence  tells,  in  a  varied  form,  much  the 
same  tale  that  school  managers  have  been  able  to 
read  for  themselves  in  the  children's  dilapidated 
boots  and  clothes,  and  their  grimy  hands  and 
uncared-for  hair,  for  it  all  indicates  poverty  at 
home,  want  of  convenience  for  decent  living,  and 
ignorance  as  well  as  carelessness  in  the  parents. 
All  this  we  have  known,  but  now  we  learn  from  the 
doctor  that  the  evil  effects  of  these  causes  do  not 
stop  at  the  clothes  and  skin,  but  go  a  little  deeper. 
Yet  probably  they  have  not  hurt  the  essential 
nature  of  the  children.  Congenital  defects  are  rare  ; 
the  doctor  discovers  even  a  high  average  of  consti- 
tutional fitness,  due,  it  may  be,  to  severe  "  natural  " 
selection  weeding  out  the  more  delicate.  It  is 
certain  that  the  village  produces  quite  a  fair  pro- 
portion of  really  handsome  children,  besides  those 
of  several  of  the  old  families,  who  are  wont  to  be  of 
exceptional  beauty.  Unhappily,  before  the  school- 
years  are  over,  the  fineness  usually  begins  to  dis- 
appear, being  spoilt,  I  suspect,  partly  by  the  pri- 
vations of  the  home-life  and  partly  by  another  cause, 
of  which  I  will  speak  by-and-by. 

I  think,  further — but  it  is  only  a  vague  impres- 
sion, not  worth  much  attention — that  as  regards 
physique  the  girls  are  as  a  rule  more  thriving  and 
comely  than  the  boys.  The  latter  appear  very  apt 
to  become  knottled  and  hard,  and  there  is  a  want  of 
generosity  in  their  growth,  as  though  they  received 


274  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

less  care  than  the  girls,  and  were  more  used  to  going 
hungry,  and  being  cold  and  wet.  But  if  my  impres- 
sion is  right,  there  are  two  points  to  be  noticed  in 
further  explanation  of  it.  The  first  point  relates  to 
the  early  age  at  which  the  boys  begin  to  be  useful  at 
work.  It  has  been  already  told  how  soon  they  are 
set  to  earn  a  little  money  out  of  school-hours  ;  but 
even  before  that  stage  is  reached  the  little  boys 
have  to  make  themselves  handy.  On  the  Saturday 
holiday  it  is  no  uncommon  thing  to  see  a  boy  of 
eight  or  nine  pushing  up  the  hill  a  little  truck  loaded 
with  coal  or  coke,  which  he  has  been  sent  to  buy  at 
the  railway  yard.  Smaller  ones  still  are  sent  to  the 
shops,  and  not  seldom  they  are  really  overloaded. 
Thus  at  an  age  when  boys  in  better  circumstances 
are  hardly  allowed  out  alone,  these  village  children 
practise  perforce  a  considerable  self-reliance,  and 
become  acquainted  with  the  fatigue  of  labour.  Some 
little  chaps,  as  they  go  about  their  duties — leading 
lesser  brothers  by  the  hand  perhaps,  or  perhaps 
dealing  very  sternly  with  them,  and  making  them 
"  keep  up  "  without  help — have  unawares  the 
manner  of  responsible  men. 

That  is  one  point  which  may  help  to  account  for 
the  apparent  physical  disparity  between  the  boys 
and  girls  of  the  village.  The  other  is  a  subject  of 
remark  amongst  all  who  know  the  school-children. 
There  is  no  doubt  about  it  ;  whether  the  girls  are 
comelier  of  growth  than  the  boys  or  not,  they  are 
in  behaviour  so  much  more  civilized  that  one  might 


THE  CHILDREN'S  NEED  275 

almost  suppose  them  to  come  from  different  homes. 
To  my  mind  this  might  be  sufficiently  explained  by 
the  fact  that  they  are  usually  spared  those  burden- 
some errands  and  responsibilities  which  are  thrust 
so  soon  upon  their  brothers  ;  but  the  schoolmaster 
has  another  explanation,  which  probably  contains 
some  truth.  His  view  is  that  at  home  the  girls 
come  chiefly  under  the  influence  of  their  mothers, 
whose  experience  of  domestic  service  gives  them  an 
idea  of  manners,  while  the  boys  take  pattern  from 
their  fathers,  whose  work  encourages  roughness. 
Whatever  the  cause,  the  fact  remains  :  the  boys 
may  be  physically  as  sound  as  the  girls,  but  they 
certainly  have  less  charm.  It  is  not  often  delightful 
to  see  them.  They  do  not  stand  up  well ;  they  walk 
in  a  slouching  and  narrow-chested  way  ;  and,  though 
they  are  mischievous  enough,  there  is  strangely 
wanting  in  them  an  air  of  alertness,  of  vivacity,  of 
delight  in  life.  There  is  no  doubt  that  their  heavily- 
ironed  and  ill-fitting  boots  cause  them  to  walk 
badly  ;  yet  it  is  only  reasonable  to  suppose  that  this 
is  but  one  amongst  many  difficulties,  and  that,  in 
general,  the  conditions  in  which  the  boys  live  are 
unfavourable  to  a  good  physical  growth. 

As  regards  intellectual  power,  in  boys  and  girls 
too,  the  evidence — to  be  quite  frank — does  not  bear 
out  all  that  I  wish  to  believe  ;  for,  in  spite  of  appear- 
ances, I  am  not  yet  persuaded  that  these  cottage 
children  are  by  birth  more  dull  of  wit  than  town- 


276  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

bred  children  and  those  in  better  circumstances. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  in  this  village,  so  near 
as  it  is  to  a  town,  there  has  been  little  of  that  migra- 
tion to  towns  which  is  said  to  have  depleted  other 
villages  of  their  cleverer  people.  A  few  lads  go  to 
sea,  more  than  a  few  into  the  army  ;  some  of  the 
girls  marry  outside,  and  are  lost  to  the  parish.  But 
it  would  be  easy  to  go  through  the  valley  and  find,  in 
cottage  after  cottage,  the  numerous  descendants  of 
old  families  that  flourished  here,  and  were  certainly 
not  deficient  in  natural  brain-power,  two  generations 
ago,  although  it  was  not  developed  in  them  on 
modern  lines.  Nor  need  one  go  back  two  genera- 
tions. To  be  acquainted  with  the  fathers  and 
mothers  of  the  school-children  is  to  know  people 
whose  minds  are  good  enough  by  nature,  and  are 
only  wanting  in  acquired  power  ;  and  when,  aware 
of  this,  one  goes  into  the  school  and  sees  the  children 
of  these  parents,  some  of  them  very  graceful,  with 
well-shaped  heads  and  eyes  that  can  sparkle  and 
lips  that  can  break  into  handsome,  laughing  curves, 
it  is  very  hard  to  believe  that  the  breed  is  dull. 
The  stupidity  is  more  likely  due  merely  to  imperfect 
nurture  ;  at  any  rate,  one  should  not  accept  an  ex- 
planation of  it  that  disparages  the  village  capacity 
for  intelligence  until  it  is  made  clear  that  the  state 
of  the  children  cannot  be  explained  in  any  other  way. 
Leaving  explanations  aside,  however,  there  is  the 
fact,  not  to  be  gainsaid,  that  the  children  in  general 
are  slow  of  wit.     One  notes  it  in  the  infant  school 


THE  CHILDREN'S  NEED  277 

first,  and  especially  in  the  very  youngest  classes. 
There,  newly  come  from  their  mother's  care,  the 
small  boys  and  girls  from  five  to  six  years  old  have 
often  a  wonderfully  vacant  expression.  There  is 
little  of  that  speculative  dancing  of  the  eyes,  that 
evident  appetite  for  perceptions  and  ideas,  which 
you  will  find  in  well-to-do  nurseries  and  play- 
rooms. And  whereas  in  the  latter  circumstances 
children  will  take  up  pencil  or  paintbrush  con- 
fidently, as  if  born  to  master  those  tools,  the  village 
infant  is  hesitating,  clumsy,  feeble.  Upon  the 
removal  of  a  child  to  the  upper  or  "  mixed  "  school, 
a  certain  increase  of  intelhgence  often  seems  to 
come  at  a  bound.  The  circumstance  is  highly 
suggestive.  The  "  infant  "  of  seven  is  suddenly 
brought  into  contact  with  older  scholars  already 
familiarized  with  particular  groups  of  ideas,  and 
those  ideas  are  speedily  absorbed  by  the  little  ones, 
while  the  swifter  methods  of  teaching  also  have 
their  quickening  effect,  for  a  time.  But  after  this 
jump  has  been  made  and  lost  sight  of — that  is  to 
say  amongst  the  older  scholars,  who  do  not  again 
meet  with  such  a  marked  change  of  environment — 
one  is  again  aware  of  considerable  mental  density 
throughout  the  school.  The  children  resemble 
their  parents.  They  are  quick  enough  to  observe 
details,  though  not  always  the  details  with  which 
the  teacher  is  concerned,  but  they  have  very  little 
power  of  dealing  with  the  simplest  abstractions. 
They  are  clumsy  in  putting  two  thoughts  together 


278  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

for  comparison  ;  clumsy  in  following  reasons,  or  in 
discussing  underlying  principles.  In  short,  "  think- 
ing "  is  an  art  they  hardly  begin  to  practise.  They 
can  learn  and  apply  a  "  rule  of  thumb,"  a  folk-rule, 
so  to  speak — but  there  is  no  flow,  nor  anjrthing 
truly  consecutive,  in  the  movement  of  their  ideas. 
Elsewhere  one  may  hear  children  of  six  or  seven — 
little  well-cared-for  people — keep  up  a  continual 
stream  of  intelligent  and  happy  talk  with  their 
parents  or  nursemaids  ;  but  to  the  best  of  my 
belief  this  does  not  happen  amongst  the  village 
children,  at  any  age. 

Observations  of  them  at  play,  in  the  cottage 
gardens  or  on  the  road,  throw  some  light  on  their 
condition.  It  would  appear  that  they  are  extremely 
ill-supplied  with  subjects  to  think  about.  In  the 
exercise  of  imagination,  other  children  fall  naturally 
into  habits  of  consecutive  thought,  or  at  any  rate 
of  consecutive  fancy  ;  but  these  of  the  labouring 
class  have  hardly  any  ideas  which  their  young 
brains  could  play  with,  other  than  those  derived 
from  their  own  experience  of  real  life  in  the  valley, 
or  those  which  they  hear  spoken  of  at  home.  Hence 
in  their  histrionic  games  of  "  pretending  "  it  is  but 
a  very  limited  repertory  of  parts  that  they  can  take. 
Two  or  three  times  I  have  come  upon  a  little  group 
of  them  under  a  hedgerow  or  sun-warmed  bank, 
playing  at  school ;  the  teacher  being  delightfully 
severe,  and  the  scholars  delightfully  naughty.  And 
now  and  again  there  is  a  feeble  attempt  at  playing 


THE  CHILDREN'S  NEED  279 

soldiers.     Very  often,   too,   one  may  see  boys,   in 
string  harness,   happy  in  being   very  mettlesome 
horses.     In  one  case  a  subtle  variant  of  this  game 
inspired  two  small  urchins  to  what  was,  perhaps, 
as  good  an  imaginative  effort  as  I  have  met  with 
in  the  village.     The  horse,  instead  of  being  frisky, 
was  being  slow,  so  that  the  driver  had  to  swear  at 
him.     And  most  vindictive  and  raucous  was  the 
infant  voice  that   I  heard  saying,   "  Git  up,   you 
blasted  lazy  cart-'orse  !"     Other  animals  are  some- 
times represented.     With  a  realistic  grunt,  a  little 
boy,  beaming  all  over  his  face,  said  to  his  com- 
panion, "  Now  I'll  be  your  pig."     Another  day  it 
puzzled  me  to  guess  what  a  youngster  was  doing, 
as  he  capered  furiously  about  the  road,  wearing  his 
cap  pushed  back  and  two  short  sticks  protruding 
from  beneath  it  over  his  forehead  ;  but  presently  I 
perceived  that  he  was  a  "  bullick  "  being  driven  to 
miarket.     Excepting   the   case   already   mentioned, 
of  the  boy  who  proposed  to  "  be  a  murderer,"  I  do 
not  recall  witnessing  any  other  forms  of  the  game 
of    "  pretending "    amongst    the    village    children, 
unless  in  the  play  of  little  girls  with  their  dolls. 
There  was  one  very  pretty  child  who  used  to  prattle 
to  me  sometimes  about  her  "  baby,"  and  how  it 
had  been  "  bad,"  that  is  to  say,  naughty,  and  put 
to  bed  ;  or  had  not  had  its  breakfast.     This  little 
girl  was  an  orphan  who  lived  with  her  grandfather 
and  a  middle-aged  aunt,  and  was  much  petted  by 
them.     She   was   almost   alone   too,   amongst   the 


28o  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

village  children  of  that  period,  in  being  the  possessor 
of  a  doll,  for  no  more  than  five  or  six  years  ago  one 
rarely  saw  such  a  thing  in  the  village.  Christmas- 
trees  have  since  done  something  to  make  up  the 
deficiency.  A  month  or  two  ago  I  saw  a  four-year- 
old  girl  —  a  friend  of  mine  from  a  neighbour's 
cottage — solemnly  walking  down  a  by-lane  alone, 
carrying  a  rag-doll  half  as  big  as  herself.  I  stopped, 
and  admired  ;  but,  in  spite  of  her  pride,  she  took 
a  very  matter-of-fact  view  of  her  toy.  "  It's  head 
keeps  comin'  off,"  was  all  that  she  could  be  per- 
suaded to  say. 

"  Matter-of-fact  "  is  what  the  children  are,  for 
the  most  part.     One  autumn  evening,  after  dark, 
titterings  and  little  squeals  of  excitement  sounded 
from  a  neighbour's  garden,  where  a  man,  going  to 
draw  water  from  his  well,  and  carrying  a  lantern, 
was  accompanied  by  four  or  five  children.     In  the 
security  of  his  presence  they  were  pretending  to  be 
afraid  of  "  bogies."     "  If  a  bogie  was  to  come,"  I 
heard,  "  I  should  get  up  that  apple-tree,  and  then 
if  he  come  up  after  me  I  should  get  down  t'other 
side."     An  excited  laugh  was  followed  by  the  man's 
contemptuous    remonstrance,    "  Shut   up !"    which 
produced  silence  for  a  minute  or  two,  until  the  party 
were  returning  to  the  cottage  ;  when  a  very  endear- 
ing voice  called  softly,  "  Bo-gie  !     Bo-gie  !     Come, 
bogie  !"     This  instance  of  fancy  in  a  cottage  child 
stands,  however,  alone  in  my  experience.     I  have 
never  heard  anything  else  like  it  in  the  village. 


THE  CHILDREN'S  NEED  281 

The  children  romp  and  squabble  and  make  much 

noise  ;  they  play,  though  rarely,  at  hide-and-seek  ; 

or  else  they  gambol  about  aimlessly,  or  try  to  sing 

together,  or  troop  off  to  look  at  the  fowls  or  the 

rabbits.     The  bigger  children  are  as  a  rule  extremely 

kind  to  the  lesser  ones.     A  family  of  small  brothers 

and  sisters  who  lived  near  me  some  time  ago  were 

most   pleasant  to  listen  to  for  this   reason.     The 

smallest  of  them,  a  three-year-old  boy  commonly 

called    "  'Arry,"    was    their   pet.     "  Look,    'Arry  ; 

here's  a  dear  little  flow-wer  !     A  little  'arts-ease — 

look,  'Arry  !"     "  'Ere,  'Arry,  have  a  bite  o'  this  nice 

apple  !"     They  were  certainly  attractive  children, 

though   formidably  grubby   as   to   their   faces.     I 

heard  them  with  their  father,  admiring  a  litter  of 

young  rabbits  in  the  hutch.     "  0-oh,  en't  that  a 

dear  little  thing  !"  they  exclaimed,  again  and  again. 

Sunday  was  especially  delightful  to  them  because 

their  father  was  at  home  then  ;  and  I  liked  to  hear 

him  playing  with  them.     One  particularly  happy 

hour  they  had,  in  which  he  feigned  to  be  angry  and 

they  to  be  defiant.     They  jumped  about  just  out 

of  his  reach,  jeering  at  him.   '  Old  Father  Smither  !" 

they  cried,  as  often  as  their  peals  of  laughter  would 

let  them  cry  anything  at  all.     But  it  struck  me  as 

very  strange  that  their  sing-song  derision  was  not 

going  to  the  right  tune  and  rhythm  ;  for  there  is  a 

genuine   folk -tune   which    I   thought   indissolubly 

wedded  to   this   derisive  formula.     Beginning  in  a 

long  drawl,  it  throws  all  the   weight  on  the  first 


282  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

and  fourth  syllables  :  "  Old  Father  Smith-er."  But 
these  children,  apparently  ignorant  of  it,  had  in- 
vented a  rh5rthm  of  their  own,  in  which  the  first 
syllable,  "  Old,"  was  almost  elided,  and  the  weight 
was  thrown  on  the  next.  I  could  not  help  wonder- 
ing at  the  breach  which  this  indicated  with  the 
ancient  folk  traditions. 

If  it  were  necessary,  plentiful  other  evidence  could 
be  produced  of  the  children's  great  need  for  more 
subjects  upon  which  to  exercise  their  thoughts  and 
fancies.  For  one  example  :  some  years  ago  a  little 
maidservant  from  this  village  was  found,  when  she 
went  to  her  first  "  place  "  in  the  town,  never  to 
have  seen  a  lamb,  or  a  pond  of  water.  This  was 
an  extreme  case,  perhaps  ;  but  it  suggests  how  badly 
the  children  are  handicapped.  As  recently  as  last 
year,  when  a  circus  was  visiting  the  town,  I  asked 
two  village  boys  on  the  road  if  they  had  seen  the 
procession.  They  had  not ;  nor  had  they  ever  in 
their  lives  seen  a  camel  or  an  elephant  ;  but  one  of 
them  "  thought  he  should  know  an  elephant,  by 
his  trunk."  He  was  probably  eight  years  old  ;  and 
it  is  worth  noting  that  he  must  have  owed  his 
enlightenment  to  books  or  pictures  seen  at  school ; 
indeed,  there  is  nothing  of  the  sort  to  be  learnt  at 
home,  where  there  are  no  books,  and  where  the 
parents,  themselves  limited  to  so  narrow  a  range 
of  experience  and  therefore  of  ideas,  are  not  apt  to 
encourage  inquisitiveness  in  their  children.  A  man 
who  lived  near  me  a  few  years  ago  could  often  be 


THE  CHILDREN'S  NEED  283 

heard,  on  Sundays  and  on  summer  evenings,  chiding 
his  Httle  son  for  that  fault.  "  Don't  you  keep  on 
astin'  so  many  questions,"  was  his  formula,  which 
I  must  have  heard  dozens  of  times.  One  can 
sympathize  :  it  would  be  so  much  easier  to  give  the 
child  a  bun,  or  the  cottage  equivalent,  and  order 
him  to  eat  it  ;  but  that  does  not  satisfy  the  child's 
appetite  for  information.  Probably  the  great  diffi- 
culty is  that  the  children's  questions  can  hardly 
any  longer  turn  upon  those  old-fashioned  subjects 
which  the  parents  understand,  but  upon  new- 
fangled things.  And,  apart  from  all  this,  I  suspect 
that  in  most  of  the  cottages  the  old  notion  prevails 
that  children  should  be  kept  in  their  place,  and  not 
encouraged  to  bother  grown-up  people  with  their 
trumpery  affairs. 

From  the  contrast  between  the  talk  of  the  village 
youngsters  and  that  of  children  who  are  better 
cared  for,  I  inferred  just  now  a  want  of  "  flow  "  in 
the  thoughts  of  the  former,  as  though  the  little 
scrappy  ideas  existed  in  their  brains  without  much 
relationship  to  one  another.  Of  course  it  is  possible 
that  the  brain  activity  is  far  greater  than  one  would 
surmise,  and  that  it  only  seems  sluggish  because  of 
the  insufficiency  of  our  village  speech  as  a  means  of 
expression,  for  certainly  the  people's  vocabulary 
is  extremely  limited,  while  they  have  no  habit  of 
talking  in  sentences  of  any  complexity.  Yet  where 
a  language  has  neither  abundant  names  for  ideas, 


284  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

nor  flexible  forms  of  construction  to  exhibit  varia- 
tions of  thought,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  the 
brain-life  itself  is  anything  but  cramped  and  stiff. 

And  if  the  crude  phrasing  indicates  poverty  in 
the  more  definite  kinds  of  ideas,  I  cannot  help 
thinking  that  another  feature  of  the  children's  talk 
betrays  no  less  a  poverty,  in  respect  to  those  more 
vague  ideas  which  relate  to  behaviour  and  to  per- 
ception of  other  people's  position  and  feelings.  It 
was  since  beginning  this  chapter  that  I  happened 
to  be  walking  for  some  distance  in  front  of  four 
children — three  girls  and  a  boy — from  a  comfort- 
able middle-class  home.  It  was  a  Sunday  morning, 
and  they  were  chatting  very  quietly,  so  that  their 
words  did  not  reach  me  ;  but  I  found  it  very  agree- 
able to  hear  the  variety  of  cadence  in  their  voices, 
with  occasionally  pauses,  and  then  a  resumption  of 
easy  talk,  as  if  they  had  got  a  subject  to  consider 
in  serious  lights,  and  recognized  each  other's  right 
to  be  heard  and  understood.  Indeed,  it  bordered 
on  priggishness,  and  perhaps  over-stepped  the 
border  ;  but  nevertheless  it  made  me  feel  jealous 
for  our  village  children,  for  in  the  conversation  of 
village  children  one  never  hears  that  suggestion  of 
a  considerate  mental  attitude  towards  one  another. 
The  speech  is  without  flexibility  or  modulation 
of  tone ;  harsh,  exclamatory,  and  screaming,  or 
guttural  and  drawling.  Rarely,  if  ever,  does  one 
derive  from  it  an  impression  that  the  children  are 
growing  to  regard  one  another's  feelings,  or  one 
another's    thoughts.    A    further    point    must    be 


THE  CHILDREN'S  NEED  285 

mentioned.  I  hinted  that  there  might  be  an 
additional  cause,  besides  physical  privations,  for 
the  loss  of  the  children's  attractiveness  in  many 
cases  even  before  they  leave  school.  My  belief  is 
that,  as  they  approach  the  age  when  ideas  of  a 
sensitive  attitude  towards  life  should  begin  to  sway 
them,  unconsciously  moulding  the  still  growing 
features  into  fineness,  those  ideas  do  not  come  their 
way.  The  boys  of  eight  begin  to  look,  at  times, 
like  little  men  ;  and  the  girls  of  eleven  and  upwards 
begin  to  show  signs  of  acquaintance  with  struggling 
domestic  economies  ;  but  "neither  boys  nor  girls 
discover,  in  the  world  into  which  they  are  growing 
up,  any  truly  helpful  ideas  of  what  it  is  comely  to 
be  and  to  think.  Lingering  peasant  notions  of 
personal  fitness  and  of  integrity  keep  them  from 
going  viciously  wrong,  so  that  when  they  come  to 
puberty  their  perplexed  spirits  are  not  quite  without 
guidance  ;  yet,  after  all,  the  peasant  conditions  are 
gone,  and  seeing  that  the  new  wage-earning  con- 
ditions do  not,  of  themselves,  suggest  worthy  ideas 
of  personal  bearing,  the  children's  faculties  for  that 
sort  of  thing  soon  cease  to  unfold,  and  with  a 
gradual  slackening  of  development  the  attractiveness 
disappears.  The  want  is  the  more  to  be  regretted 
in  that,  at  a  later  time  of  life,  when  the  women  have 
been  moulded  by  motherhood  and  the  men  by  all 
the  stress  and  responsibility  of  their  position,  such 
composure  and  strength  often  appear  in  them  as  to 
justify  a  suspicion  that  these  uncared-for  people 
are  by  nature  amongst  the  very  best  of  the  English. 


V 

THE   FORWARD  MOVEMENT 


XXI 

THE  FORWARD  MOVEMENT 

The  last  twenty  years  having  witnessed  so  much 
change  in  the  village,  it  is  interesting  to  speculate 
as  to  the  farther  changes  that  may  be  looked  for 
in  the  years  to  come  ;  indeed,  it  is  more  than  merely 
interesting.  Educational  enthusiasts  are  busy  ; 
legislators  have  their  eye  on  villages  ;  throughout 
the  leisured  classes  it  is  habitual  to  look  upon  "  the 
poor  "  as  a  sort  of  raw  material,  to  be  remodelled 
according  to  leisured  ideas  of  what  is  virtuous,  or 
refined,  or  useful,  or  nice  ;  and  nobody  seems  to 
reflect  that  the  poor  may  be  steadily,  albeit  un- 
consciously, moving  along  a  course  of  their  own, 
in  which  they  might  be  helped  a  little,  or  hindered 
a  little,  by  outsiders,  but  from  which  they  will  not 
in  the  long  run  be  turned  aside.  Yet  such  a  move- 
ment, if  it  is  really  proceeding,  will  obviously 
stultify  the  most  well-intentioned  schemes  that  are 
not  in  accordance  with  it. 

And,  if  I  am  not  greatly  mistaken,  it  is  under  way. 
That  seems  to  me  an  ill -grounded  complacency 
which  permits  easy-going  people  to  say  lightly, 
"  Of  course  we  want  a  few  reforms,"  as  if,  once 

289  19 


290  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

those  reforms  were  brought  to  pass,  the  labouring 
population  would  thereafter  settle  down  and  change 
no  more.     In  one  respect,  no  doubt,  there  is  little 
more  to  be  looked  for.     The  changes  so  far  observed 
have  been  thrust  upon  the  people  from  outside — 
changes  in  their  material  or  social   environment, 
followed  by  mere  negations  on  their  part,  in  the 
abandonment  of  traditional  outlooks  and  ambitions  ; 
and  of  course  in  that  negative  direction  the  move- 
ment must  come  to  an  end  at  last.     But  when  there 
are  no  more  old  habits  to  be  given  up,  there  is  still 
plenty  of  scope  for  acquiring  new  ones,  and  this  is 
the  possibility  that   has  to  be   considered.     What 
if,  quietly  and  out  of  sight — so  quietly  and  incon- 
spicuously as  to  be  unnoticed  even  by  the  people 
themselves — their  English  nature,  dissatisfied  with 
negations,   should  have  instinctively  set   to   work 
in  a  positive  direction  to  discover  a  new  outlook 
and     new     ambitions  ?       V/hat     if     the     merely 
mechanical  change  should  have  become  transmuted 
into  a  vital  growth  in  the  people's  spirit — a  growth 
which,  having  life  in  it,  must  needs  go  on  spon- 
taneously by  a  process  of  self-unfolding  ?     If  that 
should  be  the  case,  as  I  am  persuaded  that  it  is, 
then  the  era  of  change  in  the  village  is  by  no  means 
over  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  more  likely  that  the 
greatest  changes  are  yet  to  come. 

As  the  signs  which  should  herald  their  approach 
will  be  those  of  recovery  from  the  mental  and 
spiritual  stagnation  into  which  the  village  has  been 


THE  FORWARD  MOVEMENT  291 

plunged,  and  as  we  may  regard  that  stagnation  as 
the  starting-point  from  which  any  further  advance 
will  proceed,  it  is  worth  while  to  fix  it  in  our  minds 
by  a  similitude.  What  has  most  obviously  hap- 
pened to  the  village  population  resembles  an 
eviction,  when  the  inmates  of  a  cottage  have  been 
turned  out  upon  the  road-side  with  their  goods  and 
chattels,  and  there  they  sit,  watching  the  dismantling 
of  their  home,  and  aware  only  of  being  moved 
against  their  will.  It  is  a  genuine  movement  of 
them  ;  yet  it  does  not  originate  with  them  ;  and  the 
first  effect  of  it  upon  them  is  stagnation.  Unable 
to  go  on  in  their  old  way,  yet  knowing  no  other 
way  in  which  to  go  on,  they  merely  wait  discon- 
solate. 

The  similitude  really  fits  the  case  very  well,  in 
this  village  at  least,  and  probably  in  many  others. 
Of  the  means  whereby  the  people  have  been  thrust 
out  from  the  peasant  traditions  in  which  they  were 
at  home  I  have  discussed  only  the  chief  one — 
namely,  the  enclosure  of  the  common.  That  was 
the  cause  which  irresistibly  compelled  the  villagers 
to  quit  their  old  life  ;  but  of  course  there  were  other 
causes,  less  conspicuous  here  than  they  have  been 
elsewhere,  yet  operative  here  too.  Free  Trade, 
whilst  it  made  the  new  thrift  possible,  at  the  same 
time  effectually  undermined  many  of  the  old  modes 
of  earning  a  living  ;  and  more  destructive  still  has 
been  the  gradual  adoption  of  machinery  for  rural 
work.      We   are   shocked   to   think   of   the   unen- 


292  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

lightened  peasants  who  broke  up  machines  in  the 
riots  of  the  eighteen-twenties,  but  we  are  only  now 
beginning  to  see  fuUy  what  cruel  havoc  the  victorious 
machines    played    with    the    defeated    peasants. 
Living  men  were  "  scrapped  "  ;  and  not  only  living 
men.     What  was  really  demolished  in  that  struggle 
was  the  country  skill,  the  country  lore,  the  country 
outlook  ;  so  that  now,  though  we  have  no  smashed 
machinery,  we  have  a  people  in  whom  the  pride  of 
life  is   broken  down  :   a  shattered  section  of  the 
community ;    a    living    engine   whose   fly-wheel   of 
tradition  is  in  fragments,  and  will  not  revolve  again. 
Let  us  mark  the  finality  of  that  destruction  before 
going    further.     Whatever    prosperity  may   return 
to  our  country  places,  it  wiU  not  be  on  the  old  terms. 
The   "  few  reforms,"   whether  in  the  direction  of 
import  duties,  or  small  holdings,  or  "  technical  educa- 
tion "    in    ploughing    or    fruit-pruning   or    forestry 
or  sheep-shearing,   can  never  in  themselves  be  a 
substitute  for  the  lost  peasant  traditions,  because 
they  are  not  the  same  kind  of  thing.     For  those 
traditions  were  no  institutions  set  up  and  cherished 
by  outside  authority.     Associated  though  they  were 
with  industrial  and  material  weU-being,  they  meant 
much  more  than  that  to  country  folk  ;  they  lived 
in  the  popular  tastes  and  habits,  and  they  passed 
on  spontaneously  from  generation  to  generation,  as 
a  sort  of  rural  civilization.     And  you  cannot  create 
that  sort  of  thing  by  Act  of    Parliament,   or  by 
juggling    with    tariffs,    or    by    school    lessons.     x\n 


THE  FORWARD  MOVEMENT  293 

imitation  of  the  shell  of  it  might  be  set  up  ;  but  the 
life  of  it  is  gone,  not  to  be  restored.  That  is  the 
truth  of  the  matter.  The  old  rural  outlook  of 
England  is  dead  ;  and  the  rural  English,  waiting  for 
something  to  take  its  place,  for  some  new  tradition 
to  grow  up  amongst  them,  are  in  a  state  of 
stagnation. 

In  looking  for  signs  of  new  growth,  it  must  be 
observed  that  not  all  steps  in  the  transition  are 
equally  significant.  Amongst  the  modifications  of 
habit  slowly  proceeding  in  the  village  to-day,  there 
are  some  which  should  be  regarded  rather  as  a  final 
relinquishment  of  old  ways  than  as  a  spontaneous 
forward  movement  into  new  ones.  Thus,  although 
the  people  comply  more  and  more  willingly  with  the 
by-laws  of  the  sanitary  authority,  I  could  not  say 
with  conviction  that  this  is  anything  more  than  a 
compliance.  As  they  grow  less  used  to  squalor, 
no  doubt  they  cannot  bear  its  offensiveness  so  well 
as  of  old  ;  but  we  may  not  infer  from  this  fact  that 
any  new  and  positive  aspirations  towards  a  comelier 
home-life  have  been  born  in  them.  The  improve- 
ment is  only  one  of  those  negative  changes  that  have 
been  thrust  upon  them  from  the  outside. 

Nor  can  anything  better  be  said  of  their  increas- 
ing conformity  to  the  requirements  of  the  new  thrift. 
I  think  it  true  that  the  wages  are  spent  more 
prudently  than  of  old.  The  sight  of  a  drunken  man 
begins  to  be  unusual  ;  he  who  does  not  belong  to  a 
"  club  "  is  looked  upon  as  an  improvident  fool  ;  but 


294  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

to  imagine  the  people  thus  parsimonious  for  the 
pleasure  of  it  is  to  imagine  a  vain  thing.  Their 
occasional  outbursts  of  extravagance  and  generosity 
go  to  show  that  their  innermost  taste  has  not  found 
a  suitable  outlet  in  wage-earning  economy.  That 
miserly  "  thrift  "  which  is  preached  to  them  as 
the  whole  duty  of  "  the  Poor  " — what  attractions 
can  it  have  for  their  human  nature  ?  If  men 
practise  it,  they  do  so  under  the  compulsion  of 
anxiety,  of  fear.  Their  acquiescence  may  seem  like 
a  change  ;  yet  as  it  springs  from  no  germinating 
tastes  or  desires  or  inner  initiative,  so  it  acquires 
no  true  momentum.  Not  in  that,  nor  in  any  other 
submissive  adaptation  to  the  needs  of  the  passing 
moment,  shall  we  see  where  the  villagers  are  really 
rousing  out  of  stagnation  into  a  new  mode  of  life. 

On  the  other  hand,  where  their  vitality  goes  out, 
under  no  necessity,  but  of  its  own  accord,  to  do 
something  new  just  for  the  sake  of  doing  it,  there 
a  true  growth  is  proceeding  ;  and  there  are  signs 
that  this  is  happening.  Especially  one  notes  three 
main  directions  in  which,  as  I  think,  the  village 
is  astir — tliree  directions,  coinciding  with  three 
kinds  of  opportunity.  The  opportunities  are  those 
afforded,  first  by  the  Church  and  other  agencies  of 
a  missionary  kind  ;  second,  by  newspapers  ;  and 
third,  by  political  agitation.  In  each  of  these 
directions  the  village  instincts  appear  to  be  iinding 
something  that  they  want,  and  to  be  moving  towards 
it    spontaneously — for    they    are    under    no    com- 


THE  FORWARD  MOVEMENT  295 

pulsion  to  move.  The  invitations  from  the  Church, 
it  is  true,  never  cease  ;  but  no  villager  is  obliged  to 
accept  them  against  his  will,  any  more  than  a  horse 
need  drink  water  put  before  him. 

I.  In   estimating   the   influence   of   the    Church 
(Dissent  has  but  a  small  following  here)  it  should  be 
remembered  that  until  some  time  after  the  enclosure 
of  the  common  the  village  held  no  place  of  worship 
of  any  denomination.     Moreover,  the  comparatively 
few  inhabitants  of  that  time  were  free  from  inter- 
ference by  rich  people  or  by  resident  employers. 
They  had  the  valley  to  themselves  ;  they  had  always 
lived  as  they  liked,  and  been  as  rough  as  they  liked  ; 
and  there  must  have  been  memories  amongst  them — 
quite  recent  memories  then — of  the  lawless  life  of 
other  heath-dwellers,  their  near  neighbours,  in  the 
wide  waste  hollows  of  Hindhead.     We  may  there- 
fore surmise  that   when  the  church  was   built    a 
sprinkling  at  least  of   the  villagers  were  none  too 
well  pleased.     This  may  partly  explain  the  sullen 
hostility  of  which  the  clergy  are  still  the  objects  in 
certain   quarters    of    the   village,    and    which   the 
Pharisaism  of  some  of  their  friends  does  much  to 
keep  alive.     The  same  causes  may  have  something 
to  do  with  the  fact  that  the  majority  of  the  labour- 
ing men  appear  to  take  no  interest  at  all  in  religion. 
Still,  there  are  more  than  a  few  young  men,  and 
of  the  old  village  stock  too,  who  yield  very  readily 
to  the  influences  of  the  Church,     A  family  tradition 
no  doubt  predisposes  them  to  do  so  ;  for,  be  it  said, 


296  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

not  all  of  the  old  villagers  were  irreligious.  Echoes 
of  a  rustic  Christianity,  gentle  and  resigned  as  that 
which  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield  taught  to  his  flock, 
may  be  heard  to-day  in  the  talk  of  aged  men  and 
women  here  and  there  ;  and  though  that  piety  has 
gone  rather  out  of  fashion,  the  taste  for  something 
like  it  survives  in  these  young  men.  The  Church 
attracts  them  :  they  approve  its  ideas  of  decorous 
life  ;  it  is  a  school  of  good  manners  to  them,  if  not 
of  high  thinking,  with  the  result  that  they  begin 
to  be  quite  a  different  sort  of  people  from  their 
fathers  and  grandfathers.  A  pleasant  suavity  and 
gentleness  marks  their  behaviour.  They  are  greatly 
self-respecting.  Their  tendency  is  to  adopt  and 
live  up  to  the  middle-class  code  of  respectability. 

Neither  by  temperament  nor  by  outlook  are  they 
equipped  for  the  hardship  of  real  labouring  life. 
These  are  the  men,  rather,  who  get  the  lighter  work 
required  by  the  residential  people  in  the  viUa 
gardens  ;  or  they  fill  odd  places  in  the  town,  where 
character  is  wanted  more  than  strength  or  skill. 
They  fill  them  well,  too,  in  very  trustworthy  and 
industrious  fashion.  A  few  of  them  have  learnt 
trades,  and  are  saving  money,  as  bricklayers, 
carpenters,  clerks  even.  It  was  from  the  ranks  of 
this  group  that  a  young  man  emerged,  some  years 
ago,  as  a  speculating  builder.  He  put  up  three  or 
four  cottages,  and  then  came  to  grief  ;  but  I  never 
heard  that  anybody  but  himself  suffered  loss  by 
the  collapse  of  his  venture.     He  has  left  the  neigh- 


THE  FORWARD  MOVEMENT  297 

bourhood,  and  I  mention  him  now  only  to  exhibit 
the  middle-class  tendencies  of  his  kind.  You  will 
not  find  any  of  these  men  going  to  a  public-house. 
The  "  Institute  "  caters  for  them,  with  its  decorous 
amusements — billiards,  dominoes,  cribbage  ;  but 
they  do  not  much  affect  the  Institute  Reading 
Room  ;  indeed,  I  believe  them  to  be  intellectually 
very  docile  to  authority.  Opinions  they  have,  on 
questions  of  the  day,  but  not  opinions  formed  by 
much  effort  of  their  own.  The  need  of  the  village, 
as  they  have  felt  it,  is  less  for  mental  than  for 
ethical  help.  They  desire  something  to  guide  their 
conduct  and  their  pastimes,  and  this  leads  them  to 
respond  to  the  invitation  of  the  Church  and  its 
allied  influences. 

I  have  an  impression,  too,  that  indirectly,  through 
their  example,  others  are  affected  by  those  in- 
fluences who  do  not  so  consciously  yield  to  them  ; 
at  any  rate  a  softening  of  manners  seems  to  be  in 
progress  in  the  village.  It  is  not  much,  perhaps  ; 
it  is  certainly  very  indefinite,  and  no  doubt 
there  are  other  causes  helping  to  further  it  ;  but, 
such  as  it  is,  the  chief  credit  for  it  is  due  to  the  lead 
given  by  the  Church,  Indeed,  no  other  agency  has 
done  anything  at  all  in  the  way  of  proposing  to  the 
people  an  art  of  living,  a  civilization,  to  replace  that 
of  the  old  rustic  days. 

2.  With  few  exceptions  the  newspapers — chiefly 
weeklies,  but  here  and  there  a  daily — which  come 


298  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

into  the  villagers'  hands  are  of  the  "  yellow  press  " 
kind  ;  but  for  once  a  good  effect  may  be  attributed 
to   them.     It   resembles  that   which,   in  a  smaller 
way,  springs  from  the  opportunities  of  travelling 
afforded  by  raihvays.     Just  as  few  of  our  people 
now  are  whoUy  restricted  in  their  ideas  of  the  world 
to  this  valley  and  the  horizons  visible  from  its  sides, 
but  the  most  of  them,  in  excursion  holidays  at  least, 
have  seen  a  little  of    the  extent  and  variety  of 
England,  so,  thanks  to  the  cheap  press,  ideas  and 
information  about  the  whole  world  are  finding  their 
way  into  the  cottages  of  the  valley  ;  and  at  the 
present  stage  it  is  not  greatly  important  that  the 
information  is  less  trustworthy  than  it  might  be. 
The  main  thing  is  that  the  village  mind  should 
stretch  itself,  and  look  beyond  the  village  ;  and  this 
is    certainly    happening.     The    mere    material    of 
thought,  the  quantity  of  subjects  in  which  curiosity 
may  take  an  interest,  is  immeasurably  greater  than 
it  was  even  twenty  years  ago  ;  and,  if  but  sleepily 
as  yet,  still  the  curiosity  of  the  villagers  begins  to 
wake  up.     However  superior  you  may  think  your- 
self, you  must  not  now  approach  any  of  the  younger 
labouring  men  in  the  assumption  that  they  have 
not  heard  of  the  subject  you  speak  of.     The  coal- 
heaver,  whose  poverty  of  ideas  I  described  farther 
back,  was  talking  to  me  (after  that  chapter  was 
written)  about  the  life  of  coal-miners.     He  told  of 
the  poor  wages  they  get  for  their  dangerous  work  ; 
he  discoursed   of  mining  royalties,   and  explained 


THE  FORWARD  MOVEMENT  299 

some  points  as  to  freightage  and  railway  charges  ; 
and  he  was  drifting  towards  the  subject  of  Trades 
Unions  when  our  short  walk  home  together  came 
to  an  end.  Of  course  in  this  case  the  man's  calling 
had  given  a  direction  to  his  curiosity  ;  but  there  are 
many  subjects  upon  which  the  whole  village  may 
be  supposed  to  be  getting  ideas,  Shackleton  and 
the  South  Pole  are  probably  household  words  in 
most  of  the  cottages  ;  it  may  be  taken  for  granted 
that  the  wonders  of  flying  machines  are  being 
eagerly  watched  ;  it  must  not  be  taken  for  granted 
at  all  that  the  villagers  are  ignorant  about  disease 
germs,  and  the  causes  of  consumption,  and  the 
spreading  of  plague  by  rats.  Long  after  the  King's 
visit  to  India,  ideas  of  Indian  scenes  will  linger 
in  the  valley ;  and  presently,  when  the  Panama 
Canal  nears  completion,  and  pictures  of  it  begin 
to  be  given  in  the  papers,  there  wiU  hardly 
be  a  labourer  but  is  more  or  less  familiar  with 
the  main  features  of  the  work,  and  is  more  or  less 
aware  of  its  immense  political  and  commercial 
importance. 

Thus  the  field  of  vision  opens  out  vastly,  ideas 
coming  into  it  in  enough  variety  and  abundance  to 
begin  throwing  side-lights  upon  one  another  and  to 
illumine  the  whole  village  outlook  upon  life.  And 
while  the  field  widens,  the  people  are  winning  their 
way  to  a  greater  power  of  surveying  it  intelligently  ; 
for  one  must  notice  how  the  newspapers,  besides 
giving    information,    encourage    an    acceptance    of 


300  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

non-parochial  views.  The  reader  of  them  is  taken 
into  the  pubHc  confidence.  Instead  of  a  narrow 
village  tradition,  national  opinions  are  at  his  dis- 
posal, and  he  is  helped  to  see,  as  it  were  from  the 
outside,  the  general  aspect  of  questions  which,  but 
for  the  papers,  he  would  only  know  by  his  individual 
experience  from  the  inside.  To  give  one  illustra- 
tion :  the  labourer  out  of  work  understands  now 
more  than  his  own  particular  misfortunes  from  that 
cause.  He  is  discovering  that  unemployment  is  a 
world-wide  evil,  which  spreads  like  an  infectious 
disease,  and  may  be  treated  accordingly.  It  is  no 
small  change  to  note,  for  in  such  ways,  all  unawares, 
the  people  fall  into  the  momentous  habit  of  think- 
ing about  abstract  ideas  which  would  have  been 
beyond  the  range  of  their  forefathers'  intellectual 
power  ;  and  with  the  ideas,  their  sentiments  gain 
in  dignity,  because  the  newspapers,  with  whatever 
ulterior  purpose,  still  make  their  appeal  to  high 
motives  of  justice,  or  public  spirit,  or  public  duty. 
Fed  on  this  fare,  a  national  or  standardized  senti- 
ment is  growing  amongst  the  villagers,  in  place  of 
the  local  prejudices  which,  in  earlier  times,  varied 
from  valley  to  valley  and  allowed  the  people  of  one 
village  occasionally  to  look  upon  those  in  the  next 
as  their  natural  enemies. 

3.  Once  or  twice  before  I  have  mentioned,  as 
characteristic  of  the  peasant  outlook,  the  fatalism 
which  allowed  the  poor  to  accept  their  position  as 


THE  FORWARD  MOVEMENT  301 

part  of  the  unalterable  scheme  of  the  universe,  and 
I  associated  the  attitude  with  their  general  failure 
to  think  in  terms  of  cause  and  effect.  It  would 
seem  that  this  settled  state  of  mind  is  slowly  giving 
way  under  the  political  excitement  of  the  last  ten 
years.  I  cannot  say,  as  yet,  that  anything  worthy 
to  be  called  hope  has  dawned  upon  the  cottagers  ; 
but  an  inclination  to  look  into  things  for  themselves 
is  discernible. 

The  change,  such  as  it  is,  was  begun — or,  let  us 
say,  the  ground  was  prepared  for  its  beginning — by 
the  distress  of  unemployment  which  followed  the 
South  African  War  ;  for  then  was  bred  that  great 
discontent  which  came  to  the  surface  at  last  in  the 
General  Election  of  1906.  I  well  remember  how, 
on  the  day  when  the  Liberal  victory  in  this  division 
was  made  known,  the  labouring  men,  standing 
about  with  nothing  to  do,  gladdened  at  the  prospects 
of  the  relief  which  they  supposed  must  at  once 
follow,  and  how  their  hungry  eyes  sparkled  with 
excitement.  "  Time  there  was  a  change,"  one  of 
them  said  to  me,  "  with  so  many  o'  we  poor  chaps 
out  o'  work."  Then,  as  the  months  went  by,  and 
things  worsened  rather  than  bettered,  reaction  set  in. 
"  'Twas  bad  enough  under  the  Conservatives,  but 
'tis  ten  times  worse  under  the  Liberals."  That  was 
the  opinion  I  heard  expressed,  often  enough  to  sug- 
gest that  it  was  passing  into  a  by- word.  So,  to  all 
appearance,  the  old  apathy  was  falling  upon  the 
people,  as  no  doubt  it  had  often  done  before  after 


302  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

a  momentary  gleam  of  hope,  confirming  them  in 
the  belief  that,  whatever  happened,  it  would  not, 
as  they  said,  "make  much  odds  to  the  likes  o' 
we." 

This  time,  however,  a  new  factor  in  the  situation 
had  been  introduced,  which  tended  to  keep  alive 
in  village  minds  the  possibility  that  Poverty,  instead 
of  being  the  act  of  God,  was  an  effect  of  causes 
which  might  be  removed.  The  gospel  of  "  Tariff 
Reform  "  promised  so  much  as  to  make  it  worth 
the  people's  while  to  pay  a  little  attention  to 
politics.  Men  who  had  never  before  in  their  lives 
tried  to  follow  a  logical  argument  began  at  last  to 
store  up  in  their  memory  reasons  and  figures  in 
support  of  the  fascinating  doctrine,  and  if  they  were 
puzzle-headed  over  it,  they  were  not  more  so  than 
their  leaders.  Besides,  in  their  case  merely  to  have 
begun  is  much.  Look  at  the  situation.  During 
six  or  seven  years,  there  has  been  before  the  village 
a  vision  of  better  times  to  be  realized  by  political 
action,  and  by  support  of  a  programme  or  a  policy, 
and  the  interest  which  the  people  have  taken  in  it 
marks  a  definite  step  forwards  from  the  lethargy 
of  stagnation  in  which  they  had  previously  been 
sunk.  True,  this  particular  vision  seems  fading 
now.  Just  when  it  ought  to  have  been  growing 
clearer  and  nearer,  if  it  was  to  justify  itself,  it 
becomes  dim  and  remote,  and  my  neighbours,  I 
fancy,  are  reverting  to  their  customary  attitude  of 
aloofness  from  party  politics  ;  but  I  should  be  much 


THE  FORWARD  MOVEMENT  303 

surprised  to  find  that  it  is  quite  in  the  old  spirit. 
For  the  old  spirit  was  one  of  indifference  ;  it  rested 
in  the  persuasion  that  politicians  of  either  side  were 
only  seeking  their  own  ends,  and  that  the  game  was 
a  rich  man's  game,  in  which  the  poor  were  not 
meant  to  share.  That,  however,  is  hardly  the 
persuasion  now.  If  the  labourers  hold  aloof,  keep- 
ing their  own  counsel,  it  is  no  longer  as  outsiders,  but 
as  interested  watchers,  ready  to  take  part  strongly 
whenever  a  programme  shall  be  put  before  them 
that  deserves  their  help. 

I  have  suggested  that  the  tendency  of  those  who 
are  influenced  by  the  Church  is  towards  a  middle- 
class  outlook,  and  that  their  interest  centres  in 
developments  of  taste  and  conduct  rather  than  of 
intellect  and  opinion.  Nothing  so  definite  can  be 
said  as  to  the  effects  of  newspaper  reading  and 
political  excitement  ;  nevertheless,  I  am  conscious 
of  effects  everywhere  present.  The  labourers  whose 
interests  turn  in  this  direction  seem  to  be  treading 
in  the  footsteps  of  the  skilled  artisans  in  the  town, 
towards  ambitions  not  in  all  respects  identical  with 
those  of  the  middle-classes.  Of  course  the  un- 
skilled labourer  earning  eighteen  shillings  a  week  has 
not  equal  opportunities  with  the  man  who  earns 
thirty-six  ;  he  cannot  buy  the  newspapers  and 
occasional  books  to  which  the  other  treats  himself 
and  his  children,  and  in  general  he  is  less  well  in- 
formed.    But  the  same  grave  and  circumspect  talk 


304  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

goes  down  with  the  one  as  with  the  other  ;  to  both 
the  same  topics  are  interesting. 

And  for  me  the  probability  of  a  development  for 
our  village  labourers  similar  to  that  of  the  town 
artisans  is  heightened,  by  recollection  of  what 
artisans  themselves  were  like,  say  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago.  I  knew  a  few  of  these  very  well. 
As  craftsmen  they  were  as  able  as  those  of  to-day  ; 
but  their  crafts  had  not  taught  them  to  think. 
While  they  worked  by  rule  of  thumb,  outside  their 
work  they  were  as  full  of  prejudices,  and  as  unable 
to  grasp  reasons,  as  any  of  my  village  neighbours. 
The  most  of  them,  in  fact,  had  been  born  in  villages 
near  the  town,  and  retained  a  good  deal  of  the  rural 
outlook.  Their  gardens,  and  the  harvest — yes,  and 
odd  scraps  of  very  ancient  folk-lore  which  they  still 
believed — occupied  an  important  place  in  their 
attention.  They  had  quite  the  old  attitude  to- 
wards their  employers ;  quite  the  old  stubborn 
distrust  of  innovations  in  their  work.  When,  how- 
ever, you  turn  to  their  successors,  you  find  a 
difference.  I  wiU  not  say  that  they  are  less  able 
than  their  predecessors,  or  less  trustworthy  ;  but 
they  have  broken  away  from  all  that  old  simplicity 
of  mind  ;  they  are  thinking  for  themselves,  and 
informing  themselves,  with  an  unresting  and  un- 
hasting  interest,  about  what  the  rest  of  the  world 
knows.  It  fills  me  with  shame,  when  I  consider  my 
own  so  much  better  opportunities,  to  find  how 
much  these  hard-working  men  have  learnt,  and  with 


THE  FORWARD  MOVEMENT  305 

what  cool  tenacity  they  think.  Where  they  are 
most  wanting  is  in  enthusiasm  and  the  hopes  that 
breed  it  ;  or  say,  in  belief  that  the  world  may  yet 
change  for  the  better — though  here,  too,  political 
excitement  is  doing  its  fateful  work.  I  find  them 
very  jealous  for  their  children  to  do  well :  free 
education  has  not  sapped  their  sense  of  parental 
responsibility,  but  has  inspired  them  with  ambitions, 
though  not  for  themselves.  For  themselves  they 
are  conscious  of  a  want  of  that  book-learned  culture 
which  the  practice  of  their  skilled  crafts  cannot 
bestow,  and  this  makes  them  suspicious  of  those 
who  have  it  and  diffident  in  conversation  with  them. 
But  underneath  this  reticence  and  willingness  to 
hear  dwells  a  quiet  scepticism  which  has  no  docility 
in  it,  and  is  not  to  be  persuaded  out  of  its  way  by 
any  eloquence  or  any  emotion.  Missionary  in- 
fluences, like  those  of  church  and  chapel,  make  but 
little  impression  on  these  quiet-eyed  men.  The 
tendency  is  towards  a  scientific  rather  than  an 
aesthetic  outlook. 

And  just  as,  amongst  the  skilled  craftsmen,  there 
are  individuals  representing  every  stage  of  the 
advance  from  five-and-twenty  years  ago  until  now, 
so  the  earlier  stages  at  least  of  the  same  advance 
are  represented,  one  beyond  another,  by  labouring 
men  in  this  village.  I  could  not  find  any  labourers 
who  are  so  far  forward  as  the  forwardest  artisans  ; 
but  I  could  find  some  who  have  travelled,  say,  half 
the   way,   and   many  who   have  reached  different 

20 


3o6  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

points  between  that  and  the  stagnation  which  was 
the  starting-point  for  all.  Hence  I  cannot  doubt 
that  the  villagers  in  general  are  moving  on  the  route 
along  which  the  town  artisans  have  passed  a  genera- 
tion ahead  of  them.  They  are  hindered  by  great 
poverty ;  hampered  by  the  excessive  fatigues  of  their 
daily  work ;  entrammelled  by  remnants  of  the  peasant 
traditions  which  still  cling  about  them  ;  but  the 
movement  has  begun.  The  first  stupefying  effect 
of  their  eviction  from  the  peasant  life  is  passing 
away,  and  they  are  setting  their  faces  towards  the 
future,  to  find  a  new  way  of  life. 

It  may  be  urged  that,  along  with  the  Church,  the 
newspaper  and  politics,  education  should  have  been 
named,  as  a  fourth'^power  affecting  the  village 
destinies.  A  moment's  consideration,  however,  will 
discover  that  it  does  not  come  into  the  same  cate- 
gory with  those  three  influences,  if  only  for  this 
reason,  that  it  is  forced  upon  the  viUage  children 
from  outside,  while  the  older  people  have  no  chance 
to  interest  themselves  in  it  as  "they  have  in  the 
Church  teachings  or  in  the  daily  paper.  No  spon- 
taneous movement,  therefore,  such  as  I  have  out- 
lined in  the  other  cases,  can- be  traced  in  regard  to 
education  ;  but  I  had  a  stronger  reason  than  that 
for  omitting  mention  of  it.  To  be  quite  plain,  I  do 
not  think  it  is  making  anything  like  so  much  im- 
pression on  the  village  life  as  it  ought  to  make,  and 
as  it  is  commonly  supposed  to  be  making.  It  is 
not  quite  a  failure  ;  but  it  is  by  no  means  a  great 


THE  FORWARD  MOVEMENT  3^7 

success.  In  so  far  as  it  has  enabled  the  people  to 
read  their  papers  (and  it  has  not  done  that  very 
well)  it  has  been  serviceable  ;  but  neither  as  a  cause 
of  change  nor  as  a  guide  into  happier  wa}^  of  life 
has  it  any  claim  to  especial  mention  in  these 
chapters.  I  am  not  saying  that  it  is  unworthy  of 
attention  :  on  the  contrary,  there  is  no  subject 
relating  to  the  village  that  demands  so  much.  If, 
as  I  believe,  it  is  one,  and  the  foremost,  of  those 
activities  which  are  largely  abortive  because  they 
have  not  got  into  touch  with  the  spontaneous  move- 
ment of  the  village  life,  the  matter  is  of  the  utmost 
seriousness.  But  this  is  not  the  place  for  entering 
into  it  ;  for  I  have  not  set  out  to  criticize  the  varied 
experiments  in  reform  which  are  being  tried  upon 
the  labouring  people.  My  book  is  finished,  now 
that  I  have  pointed  to  the  inner  changes  going  on 
in  the  village  itself. 

As  to  the  future  of  those  changes,  I  will  not  add 
to  what  I  have  already  said,  but  there  is  evidently 
much  room  for  speculation  ;  and  those  who  best 
know  the  villagers — their  brave  patience,  their 
sincerity,  the  excellent  groundwork  of  their  nature — 
and  those  who  see  how  full  of  promise  are  the 
children,  generation  after  generation,  until  hard- 
ship and  neglect  spoil  them,  will  be  slow  to  believe 
what  leisured  folk  are  so  fond  of  saying — namely, 
that  these  lowly  people  owe  their  lowliness  to  defects 
in  their  inborn  character.  It  is  too  unlikely. 
The  race  which,  years  ago,  in  sequestered  villages. 


3o8  CHANGE  IN  THE  VILLAGE 

unaided  by  the  outer  world  at  all,  and  solely  by 
force  of  its  own  accumulated  traditions,  could  build 
up  that  sturdy  peasant  civilization  which  has  now 
gone  —  that  race,  I  say,  is  not  a  race  naturally 
deficient.  There  is  no  saying  what  its  offspring 
may  not  achieve,  once  they  get  their  powers  of 
intellect  awake  on  modern  lines  and  can  draw  freely 
upon  the  great  world  for  ideas. 

At  any  rate,  the  hope  is  great  enough  to  forbid 
the  indulgence  of  any  deep  regret  for  what  has  gone 
by.    The  old  system  had  gone  on  long  enough.    For 
generations  the  villagers  had  grown  up  and  lived 
and  died  with  large  tracts  of  their  EngUsh  vitality 
neglected,  unexplored  ;  and  I  do  not  think  the  end 
of  that  wasteful  system  can  be  lamented  by  anyone 
who    believes   in   the   English.     Rather   it   should 
reconcile  us  to  the  disillusionments  of  this  present 
time  of  transition.     They  are  devastating,  I  admit  ; 
for  me,  they  have  spoilt  a  great  deal  of  that  pleasure 
which  the  English  country  used  to  give  me,  when  I 
still  fancied  it  to  be  the  scene  of  a  joyful  and  comely 
art  of  living.     I  know  now  that  the  landscape  is  not 
peopled  by  a  comfortable  folk,  whose  dear  and  in- 
timate love  of  it  gave  a  human  interest  to  every 
feature  of  its  beauty  ;  I  know  that  those  who  live 
there  have  in  fact  lost  touch  with  its  venerable 
meanings,    while   aU   their    existence    has   turned 
sordid  and  anxious  and  worried  ;  and  knowing  this, 
I  feel  a  forlornness  in  country  places,  as  if  all  their 
best  significance  were  gone.     But,  notwithstanding 


THE  FORWARD  MOVEMENT  309 

this,  I  would  not  go  back.  I  would  not  lift  a 
finger,  or  say  a  word,  to  restore  the  past  time,  for 
fear  lest  in  doing  so  I  might  be  retarding  a  move- 
ment which,  when  I  can  put  these  sentiments  aside, 
looks  like  the  prelude  to  a  renaissance  of  the  English 
country-folk. 

Note. — In  the  preceding  chapters  no  reference  is  made 
either  to  the  new  Insurance  Act  or  to  recent  labour  unrest. 
The  book  was,  in  fact,  aheady  in  the  publishers'  hands  when 
those  matters  began  to  excite  general  attention  ;  and  it  hardly 
seems  necessary  now,  merely  for  the  sake  of  being  momentarily 
up  to  date,  to  begin  introducing  allusions  which  after  all  would 
leave  the  main  argument  unchanged. 

December,  191 1. 


THE   END 


BILLING   AND   SONS,    LTD.,    PRINTERS,   GUILDFORD 


nxriVF.RSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  LOS  ANGELES 

University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

305  De  Neve  Drive  -  Parking  Lot  17  •  Box  951388 

LOS  ANGELES,  CALIFORNIA  90095-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library  from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


f 


23ni-2,'43(r,I03) 


U..^  .  -- SITY  of  CALIFORNIA 
AT 


AA    000  395  693 


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